“My dear lad, that’s just it,” said he, almost earnestly and in all sincerity. “A man on a farm by himself must be in heaven. On the same farm, with a family, he may be in—in quite another place.”
“I see, I see,” murmured Fred, pressing his arm against that of the older man. “Money market tight, and all that.”
“Tight, I believe you!” assented Mr. Denison, bubbling over with his confidences, as weak men do when they have had to exercise an unwonted self-repression. “You would scarcely believe what the tightness amounts to sometimes. A young man in your position couldn’t realize it.”
“Oh, yes, I could though. Nothing of that sort that you have ever borne is as bad as what my guvnor’s gone through lots of times. It was before he was blessed with me, and of course he don’t talk about it; but you may take my word it’s true.”
“Dear me!” said Mr. Denison, as if this was almost inconceivable. Though in truth the airs of patronage the elder Mr. Williams liked to assume had often caused him to jibe gently in the bosom of his family at the waste of pounds by men who were better used to pence.
“But it seems worse for you, you know—don’t seem natural somehow. Seems as if it were the right and proper thing for you to have lots of money. Makes me uncomfortable to hear you haven’t, and—and all that sort of thing, you know.”
He gabbled out this broken speech with an air of modest confusion which touched Mr. Denison, whose finances were at a distressingly low ebb. He pressed the young fellow’s arm in silence—rather awkwardly, but with much feeling. Fred went on, quickly—
“Now don’t be offended; you mustn’t be offended. I’m not of enough account in the world for a man like you to be offended with me. But if you wouldn’t mind—you needn’t think anything of it—if you should be tight, I mean strait, anything like hard up, in fact, I should really feel it quite an honor if you would—”
Poor Mr. Denison was quite broken by this offer, which came upon him unexpectedly. He protested, stammered, grew red in the face, and dim in the eyes. He was a gentleman, sensitive, and not without pride. But he was weak-natured—harassed by difficulties he saw no way out of. Although he repeatedly refused Fred’s repeated offers and with perfect sincerity; he did so in a tone which encouraged the young man to think that his yielding was only a question of time and of an adroitly chosen moment.
“At any rate, you’re not offended with me for making the suggestion?” Fred asked at last.