‘Hoity-toity! You request me?’
‘Yes; or rather I command you. Come, Mr. Gurth Egerton, you are not the only beggar who can sit a horse. I can be up in the stirrups too.’
Gurth Egerton looked at Marston for a moment, but the face of the latter betrayed nothing.
‘Look here, Ned Marston,’ he said, after a pause; ‘I don’t want to quarrel with you, but you are adopting a tone which doesn’t suit you at all. It’s out of place, my dear fellow. Who are you!’
‘You know well enough.’
‘Perhaps I do. As you evidently forget yourself, let me remind you. Some time ago a ragged, half-starved fellow turned up in London, after a long absence from the scenes of his youth, and came cadging to a friend of mine. My friend, acting on my behalf, gave him five hundred pounds for old acquaintance sake.’
Marston interrupted.
‘So Birnie let you in for that five hundred, did he?’ he exclaimed with a laugh. ‘What a chap he is!’
‘I paid the five hundred you drew of Birnie. Certainly I did!’ continued Gurth. ‘I was very glad to do it for a poor devil out of luck whom I had known in former times. I could afford it, you know——-’
‘Of course you could, having Ralph’s money to spend.’