“Why d—n it, what ails you?” said Voles.
“What ails me?”
“You aren’t talking like yourself—you have never been like yourself since you’ve taken this line.”
Jones felt himself changing colour. In his excitement he had let his voice run away with him.
“It doesn’t matter a button whether I’m like myself or not,” said he, “you’ve got to write that note, and do it now while I dictate.”
Voles drummed on the desk with his fingers, then he took a sheet of paper and an envelope from a drawer.
“Well,” said he, “what is it to be?”
“Nothing alarming,” said the other. “Just three words. ‘It’s all up’—how do you address him?”
Without reply Voles wrote.
“Dear M.