"I wish I could think so," muttered Barry gloomily.
"So you've lost confidence in me, too?" Armstrong said this with more mockery than reproach. "It's lucky I don't rely on confidence in me to get results, isn't it? Well, Jim——"
"Oh, I'll stand by you, Armstrong, faith or no faith," interrupted Barry.
"Thanks," said Armstrong, somewhat dryly. "But I'm bound to tell you that the result will be just the same, whether you do or not. If you want to accept Trafford's offer that you have taken under consideration, don't hesitate on my account."
Barry was scarlet. "It was on account of my family," he stammered. "My wife's been at me to——"
"Of course she has," said Armstrong. "Don't say any more."
"She's like all the women," Barry insisted on saying. "She likes luxury and all that, and she's afraid I'll lose my hold, and she knows how generous Trafford is."
"Yes," drawled Armstrong. "This country is full of that kind of generosity nowadays—generosity with other people's money."
"The women don't think about that side of it," said Barry. "They think that as pretty much everybody's doing that sort of thing—everybody that is anybody—why, it must be all right. And, by gad, Horace, sometimes it almost seems to me I'm a fool, a dumb one, to stick to the old-fashioned ways. Why be so particular about not taking people's property when they leave it around and don't look after it themselves, and when somebody else'll take it, if I don't—somebody who won't make as good use of it as I would?"
"The question isn't whose property it is, but whose property it isn't," said Armstrong. "And, when it isn't ours, why—I guess 'hands off' is honest—and decent." And then he colored and his eyes shifted, as if the other could read in them the source of this idea which he had thought and spoken as if it were his own.