“Bother him. Yes, and but for you, Richards, never an account should he have had with us.”
“Well, Jack gets round me somehow. He is not half a bad lad, with his dash and his fun and his jollity. Ay, and his ways are very winning sometimes. He does get round one, partner.”
“I don’t doubt it, Richards. Winning enough when he wants to get round you and wheedle cash out of you. I tell you what, partner: Jack’s got all his father’s aristocratic notions, all his father’s pride and improvidence. Ay, and he’d ruin his dad too, if—if—”
“If what, partner?”
“Why, if his dad weren’t ruined already.”
“Come, come, Keane, it isn’t quite so bad as that.”
“Pretty nigh it, I can assure you. And I can’t get the proud old Scot to retrench. Why doesn’t he let that baronial hall of his, instead of sticking to it and mortgaging it in order to keep up appearances and entertain half the gentry in the county? Why doesn’t he take a five-roomed cottage, and let his daughter teach the harp that she plays so well?”
“O partner! Come, you know!”
“Well, ‘O partner’ as much as you like; if old Mackenzie’s pride were proper pride, his daughter would take in washing sooner than the family should go deeper in debt every day. But the crisis will come; somebody will foreclose.”
“You won’t surely, partner?”