“Indeed? I am concerned. Nothing serious, I trust? My services, I need not say, are at the command of so valued an old friend.”
“He needs no services but mine. It is the debility of old age, I fear—nothing more.”
“Yet he is a comparatively young man. But it’s true that to mortgage one’s youth too heavily is to risk the premature foreclosing of old age.”
“I dare say. Was there any other object in your visit?”
“One other—frankly.”
He held out a damp hand to me. It shook rather.
“I’m tired of this duel of cross-purposes. Will you agree to cry an armistice—peace, if you like?”
I took him in from head to foot—a little to his discomfiture, no doubt.
“Is this pure philanthropy, Dr. Crackenthorpe?” I said.
“Most pure and disinterested,” said he. “I claim, without offense, the grievance as mine, and I am the first to come forward and cry. Let there be an end to it.”