"You think I haven't done enough? Wasn't it for your sake I married your foster-mother? Haven't I thrown away hundreds of pounds on your miserable education as you call it, and your fantastic inventions in the engineering line that never came to anything? I could ill spare the money at the time, I can assure you."
"Oh, now I suppose we're to have the old story over again, with the £150."
"It won't do you any harm to hear it again. Where would you have been, or I and the lot of us, in 1875, if Knut G. Holm hadn't got that £150 from C. Henrik Pettersen. Down and under, and that with a vengeance."
"It was very good of Pettersen, I'm sure."
"Pettersen it was; it couldn't have been anyone else. The money was sent anonymously, as you know, the very morning I was thinking of putting up the shutters and giving up for good. Just the money, and a slip of paper, no business heading, only 'Herewith £150, a gift from one who wishes you well.' That was all, no signature, only a cross, or an 'x' or whatever it was, at the foot."
"Only an 'x'?"
"That was absolutely all. I puzzled my brains to think out who the good soul could be, but could never bring it round to anyone but C. Henrik Pettersen, my old friend. Though it wasn't like him, and that's the truth."
"You mean he was close-fisted generally?"
"He was a business man, my boy, if ever there was one. But we knew each other better than most. I was in the know about his dairy butter at fifty per cent. profit—though the Lord knows I wouldn't say a word against him now he's dead and gone."
"But didn't you ask him straight out if it was he that sent the money?"