‘If you do, it must be share and share alike with the rest of the creditors.’
‘And that would be no good,’ said Arthur, ‘with all the harpies to share. I wish you would consent, Percy. Think what it is to me to lie here, feeling that I have ruined not only myself, but all my sister’s hopes of happiness!’
‘Nay, you have been the means of bringing us together again. And as to your wife—’
‘I must not have her good deeds reckoned to me,’ said Arthur, sadly. ‘But what can you do? My father cannot pay down Theodora’s fortune.’
‘We must wait,’ interrupted Percy, cheerfully.
Arthur proceeded. ‘Wait! what for? Now you are cut out of Worthbourne, and my aunt’s money might as well be at the bottom of the sea, and—’
‘I can hear no croaking on such a day as this,’ broke in Percy. ‘As to Worthbourne, it is ill waiting for dead men’s shoon. I always thought Pelham’s as good a life as my own, and I never fancied Mrs. Nesbit’s hoards. If I made three thousand pounds in five years, why may I not do so again? I’ll turn rapacious—give away no more articles to benighted editors on their last legs. I can finish off my Byzantine history, and coin it into bezants.’
‘And these were your hard-earned savings, that should have forwarded your marriage!’
‘They have,’ said Percy, smiling. ‘They will come back some way or other. I shall work with a will now! I am twice the man I was yesterday. It was heartless work before. Now, “some achieve greatness,” you know.’
Arthur would have said more, but Percy stopped him. ‘If you gave it me to-morrow, we could not marry on it. Let things alone till you are about again, and John comes home. Meantime, trust her and me for being happy. A fico for the world and worldlings base.’