‘I don’t think he is actually a bad fellow, sir. He is often terribly hard up and has to do scores of shifty things, but I never found him out in anything dishonourable or false.’
‘That’s a matter of taste, perhaps. Maybe you and I might differ about what was honourable or what was false. At all events, he was under our roof here, and if those nobs—or swells, I believe you call them—were like to be of use to any of us, we, the people that were entertaining them, were the first to be thought of; but your pleasant friend thought differently, and made such good use of his time that he cut you out altogether, Dick—he left you nowhere.’
‘Really, sir, it never occurred to me till now to take that view of the situation.’
‘Well, take that view of it now, and see how you’ll like it! You have your way to work in life as well as Mr. Atlee. From all I can judge, you’re scarcely as well calculated to do it as he is. You have not his smartness, you have not his brains, and you have not his impudence—and, ‘faith, I’m much mistaken but it’s the best of the three!’
‘I don’t perceive, sir, that we are necessarily pitted against each other at all.’
‘Don’t you? Well, so much the worse for you if you don’t see that every fellow that has nothing in the world is the rival of every other fellow that’s in the same plight. For every one that swims, ten, at least, sink.’
‘Perhaps, sir, to begin, I never fully realised the first condition. I was not exactly aware that I was without anything in the world.’
‘I’m coming to that, if you’ll have a little patience. Here is a letter from Tom McKeown, of Abbey Street. I wrote to him about raising a few hundreds on mortgage, to clear off some of our debts, and have a trifle in hand for drainage and to buy stock, and he tells me that there’s no use in going to any of the money-lenders so long as your extravagance continues to be the talk of the town. Ay, you needn’t grow red nor frown that way. The letter was a private one to myself, and I’m only telling it to you in confidence. Hear what he says: “You have a right to make your son a fellow-commoner if you like, and he has a right, by his father’s own showing, to behave like a man of fortune; but neither of you have a right to believe that men who advance money will accept these pretensions as good security, or think anything but the worse of you both for your extravagance.”’
‘And you don’t mean to horsewhip him, sir?’ burst out Dick.
‘Not, at any rate, till I pay off two thousand pounds that I owe him, and two years’ interest at six per cent. that he has suffered me to become his debtor for.’