"Speak for yourself," said Harold. "I don't talk in tags of Latin, which might be learned by a school-master's foot-boy. I find the King's English expresses my meaning better."
"In the King's English, then," said Jermyn, who could be idiomatic enough when he was stung, "a candidate should keep his kicks till he's a member."
"Oh, I suppose Johnson will bear a kick if you bid him. You're his principal, I believe."
"Certainly, thus far—a—he is my London agent. But he is a man of substance, and——"
"I shall know what he is if it's necessary, I dare say. But I must jump into the carriage again. I've no time to lose; I must go to Hawkins at the factory. Will you go?"
When Harold was gone, Jermyn's handsome face gathered blackness. He hardly ever wore his worst expression in the presence of others, and but seldom when he was alone, for he was not given to believe that any game would ultimately go against him. His luck had been good. New conditions might always turn up to give him new chances; and if affairs threatened to come to an extremity between Harold and himself, he trusted to finding some sure resource.
"He means to see to the bottom of everything if he can, that's quite plain," said Jermyn to himself. "I believe he has been getting another opinion; he has some new light about those annuities on the estate that are held in Johnson's name. He has inherited a deuced faculty for business—there's no denying that. But I shall beg leave to tell him that I've propped up the family. I don't know where they would have been without me; and if it comes to balancing, I know into which scale the gratitude ought to go. Not that he's likely to feel any—but he can feel something else; and if he makes signs of setting the dogs on me, I shall make him feel it. The people named Transome owe me a good deal more than I owe them."
In this way Mr. Jermyn inwardly appealed against an unjust construction which he foresaw that his old acquaintance the law might put on certain items in his history.
I have known persons who have been suspected of under-valuing gratitude, and excluding it from the list of virtues; but on closer observation it has been seen that, if they have never felt grateful, it has been for want of an opportunity; and that, far from despising gratitude, they regard it as the virtue most of all incumbent—on others toward them.