“Then do you really advise us to tell this youth—”
“I advise nothing,” he interrupted, glancing up and down the Embankment, in case his indiscretion had been overheard. “I oughtn’t to have spoken—but I happen to know, being more or less behind the scenes. The Porphyrion’s a bad, bad concern—Now, don’t say I said so. It’s outside the Tariff Ring.”
“Certainly I won’t say. In fact, I don’t know what that means.”
“I thought an insurance company never smashed,” was Helen’s contribution. “Don’t the others always run in and save them?”
“You’re thinking of reinsurance,” said Mr. Wilcox mildly. “It is exactly there that the Porphyrion is weak. It has tried to undercut, has been badly hit by a long series of small fires, and it hasn’t been able to reinsure. I’m afraid that public companies don’t save one another for love.”
“‘Human nature,’ I suppose,” quoted Helen, and he laughed and agreed that it was. When Margaret said that she supposed that clerks, like every one else, found it extremely difficult to get situations in these days, he replied, “Yes, extremely,” and rose to rejoin his friends. He knew by his own office—seldom a vacant post, and hundreds of applicants for it; at present no vacant post.
“And how’s Howards End looking?” said Margaret, wishing to change the subject before they parted. Mr. Wilcox was a little apt to think one wanted to get something out of him.
“It’s let.”
“Really. And you wandering homeless in long-haired Chelsea? How strange are the ways of Fate!”
“No; it’s let unfurnished. We’ve moved.”