"Oh! no, sir."
"You have a most unpleasant habit of blurting out anything that comes uppermost. That's your great failing, Sid."
"I like to speak out, sir."
"And after all, perhaps if we had spoken out less—he and I—we should not have been all these years at arm's length, and you might have been the better for that. There's no telling, things turn out so strangely. And it wasn't so much his refusal to lend me, his only brother, ten thousand pounds—ten drops of water to him—but the way in which he refused, the bitterness of his words, the gall and wormwood instead of brotherly sympathy. I was half mad with my losses, and he stung me with his cool and insolent taunts, and cast me off to beggary—Sid, would you forgive that?"
Mr. Hinchford had realized the scene again; through the mists of five-and-twenty years, it shone forth vividly; his cheek flushed, and his hand smote the table heavily, and made the tea things jump again.
Sidney cooled him by a few words.
"He has been cautious with his money, and you might have shown signs of being reckless with yours, at that time. Possibly you both were heated, and said more than you intended. It don't appear to me to have been a very serious affair, after all."
"Did he ever seek me out again, or care whether I was alive or dead, until to-day?—was that kind?"
"Did you ever seek him out!"
"He was the rich man, and I the poor, Sid."