"Nor out of this room?"
"No, sir."
"Ah! Is that so--is that so? You have your office coat on, and your office slippers. Had you not better change them?"
"I was going to do so, sir," said Abel Death. Mr. Boyd's keen eyes were upon him while he made the change. "May I hope, sir, that you will grant the request you kindly promised to consider? It may be a matter of life or death, it may indeed. It means so much to me--so much! I humbly beg you, sir, to grant it."
"Let me see. You asked me for a loan."
"A small loan, sir, of ten pounds. I have trouble and sickness at home, I am sorry to say."
"It is inconceivable," said Mr. Boyd coldly, "that a man in regular employment should need a loan unless it is for the gratification of some unwarrantable extravagance. Your wages are paid regularly, I believe."
"Yes, sir. I don't complain, but it is not an easy task to keep a wife and family on twenty-two shillings a week. I don't know how it is," said Abel Death, rubbing his forehead as though he were endeavouring to rub some problem out of it, or some better understanding of a social difficulty into it, "but when Saturday comes round we have never a sixpence left."
"Very likely. It is the old story of improvidence. Thrift, Abel, thrift. That is the lesson the poor have to learn, and never will learn."
"Ten pounds, sir, only ten pounds," implored Abel Death.