“Of course we can’t,” said Grimstone. “All I wish is that I hadn’t let you persuade me into lending him the money—the savings of a whole life.”
“Oh, I like that!” said Mr Jabez, catching up a pen, and making a mark as if he were correcting Grimstone.
“Like it or not, I don’t care,” said Grimstone, “there it is. Here! boy, my hat.”
“Going?” said Mr Jabez.
“Going! of course I’m going. Think I’m going to stop in this dog-hole, smelling of red-herrings and oil?”
“Won’t you take something? Try a fig.”
Mr Grimstone snatched his hat from my hands, gazed at me as if he would have liked to set me to pick up pie, and bounced out of the room.
“I don’t know which is most unpleasant, Grace,” said the old man, “Grimstone or his news. Well, he’s gone. Of course, you won’t talk about what you’ve heard. It’s a very bad job, though, for me—very—very. Hi! Mrs Jennings,” he cried at the top of the stairs, “half an ounce of best Scotch and Rappee.”
He tapped with his box on the handrail as he spoke, and having had it replenished, he came back to sit and take pinches, becoming so abstracted and ill at ease, that I rose to go when he was a quarter through the half-ounce.
“Going, Grace?” he said. “Ah, I’m bad company to-night, but come again. Let me see, though,” he said, fumbling at some letters in his breast-pocket, “I’ve got a letter here from that bad boy, Peter. Just the same as usual. Tut—tut—oh, here it is. ‘Remember me to that boy,’—ah, blunder I call it boy—‘Antony Grace. Tell him I shall come to see him if ever I get two London.’ There’s a fellow for you,” said Mr Jabez, “spells ‘to’ like the figure 2. But he always did want a deal of correcting, did Peter. Good-night, good-night.”