“I suppose you couldn’t borrow?” she suggested, looking at him over her spectacles.
“No, who would lend me money? I have no security and no wealthy friends.”
“Well, I am not a wealthy friend, Douglas, but I will lend you a hundred pounds—I’ve saved a good bit—and I can.”
“No, no, Mrs. Malone,” he interrupted. “I couldn’t accept it. I know how hardly your money has been earned; I know all your hateful worries; your bothers with servants and coal; your trampings into ‘the Grove,’ and up and down these confounded stairs.”
“But, Douglas, you can pay me back by degrees.”
“No; you’d run a poor chance of seeing your hundred pounds again. Mr. Martin informed me the firm never paid in advance, as cholera carried off people in a few hours—cheerful, wasn’t it? And if I were carried off, where would you be?”
“Here, my boy, and in the deepest grief.”
“Well, thanking you all the same, I will not touch a penny of your money; but I know you are long-headed and may think of some scheme for me. I’ve got nothing to sell of any value; I parted with my father’s watch—and it’s still at the pawnbroker’s; worse luck!” (His pitilessly selfish mother had borrowed ten pounds and forgotten the debt, and he had been compelled to apply to his “Uncle.”) Shafto found his salary a very tight fight; eleven pounds a month seemed to melt away in board, clothes, washing and those innumerable little expenses that crop up in London.
“Anyhow, you have till Friday, you proud, obstinate boy, and before that, I may be able to thrash out something. I have noticed that you don’t look yourself the last few weeks, not my dear lively Douglas, tearing up and down stairs, whistling like a blackbird. Tell me the reason,” and she laid a well-shaped wrinkled hand upon his arm.
Then, walking up and down the room, he frankly unfolded his troubles—the approaching marriage of his mother (this was no news), and, in an agitated and incoherent manner, his desperate predicament with regard to Cossie Larcher.