"Is that all!" ejaculated Tomlinson. "And this morning we have to pay Greenwood the two thousand pounds he lent me six weeks ago."
"We can't part with the money," said the cashier rudely. "Greenwood knows the circumstances of the bank, and must give time."
"You know what Greenwood is, Michael," exclaimed the banker. "If we are not punctual with him, he will never lend us another shilling and what should we have done without him on several occasions?"
"I know all that. But look at the interest be makes you pay," muttered the cashier.
"And look at the risk he runs," added the banker.
"He finds it worth his while. I calculated the other day that we paid him three thousand pounds last year for interest only: we can't go on much longer at that rate."
"I had almost said that the sooner it ends the better," cried Tomlinson. "What low trickery—what meanness—what abominable craft, have we been compelled to resort to! Oh! if that affair with the Treasury three years ago had only turned up well—if we could have secured the operation, we should have retrieved all our losses, enormous as they are—we should have built up the fortunes of the establishment upon a more solid foundation than ever."
"That was indeed a misfortune," observed the cashier, taking a huge pinch of snuff.
"And how the Chancellor of the Exchequer obtained his information about me—at the eleventh hour—after all previous inquiries were known to be satisfactory," continued Tomlinson, "I never could conjecture. At that time the secret was confined to you and me, and my father, to whom I communicated it, you remember, in that letter which I wrote to him soliciting the fifty thousand pounds."
"Which sum saved the bank at that period," observed Michael.