"I give you my word," said George, "I don't know how to spell it. The two words sound exactly alike and I'm always confusing them."
His mother came and stood over him. "George, you are not to go to Mr. Thorpe with your pecuniary difficulties. I forbid it, do you understand?"
"Forbid it, mother? Great Scot, what's wrong in an honest little business transaction? I shall give him the best of security. If he doesn't care to let me have the money on the note, that's his affair. It's business, not friendship, I assure you. Old Tempy knows a good thing when he sees it. I shall also promise to pay twenty per cent. interest for two years from date. Two years, do you understand? If anything should happen to him before the two years are up, I'd still owe the money to his estate, wouldn't I? You can't deny that—"
"Stop! Not another word, sir! Am I to believe that I have a son who is entirely devoid of principle? Are you so lacking in pride that—"
"It depends entirely on how you spell the word, principal or with a ple. I am entirely devoid of the one ending in pal, and I don't see what pride has to do with it anyway. Ask Anne. She can tell you all that is necessary to know about the Tresslyn pride."
"Shut up!" said Anne languidly.
"It's just this way, mother," said George, sitting up, with a frown. "I've got to have five or six hundred dollars. I'll be honest with you, too. I owe nearly that much to Percy Wintermill, and he is making himself infernally obnoxious about it."
"Percy Wintermill? Have you been borrowing money from him?"
"In a way, yes. That is, I've been asking him for it and he's been lending it to me. I don't think I've ever used the word borrow in a single instance. I hate the word. I simply say: 'Percy, let me take twenty-five for a week or two, will you?' and Percy says, 'All right, old boy,' and that's all there is to it. Percy's been all right up to a few weeks ago. In fact, I don't believe he would have mentioned the matter at all if Anne hadn't turned him down on New Year's Eve. Why the deuce did you refuse him, Anne? He'd always been decent till you did that. Now he's perfectly impossible."
"You know perfectly well why I refused him," said Anne, lifting her eyebrows slightly.