“Yes, I know,” Thorpe commented, with a lingering tone. “Perhaps I ought to think more about that. By the way, what's Plowden doing? I've lost all track of him.”
“Abroad somewhere, I fancy,” Semple replied. His manner exhibited a profound indifference. “When his mother died he came into something—I don't know how much. I don't think I've seen him since—and that must have been six months and more ago.”
“Yes. I heard about it at the time,” the other said. “It must be about that. His sister and brother—the young Plowdens—they're coming to us at the end of the week, I believe. You didn't hit it off particularly with Plowden, eh?”
Semple emitted a contemptuous little laugh. “I did not quarrel with him—if you mean that,” he said, “but even to please you, Thorpe, I couldn't bring myself to put my back into the job of making money for him. He was treated fairly—even generously, d'ye mind. I should think, all told, he had some thirty thousand pounds for his shares, and that's a hundred times as much as I had a pleasure in seeing him get. Each man can wear his own parasites, but it's a task for him to stand another man's. I shook your Lord Plowden off, when the chance came.”
“THAT'S all right,” Thorpe assured him, easily. “I never told you that he was any good. I merely felt like giving him a leg up—because really at the start he was of use to me. I did owe him something....It was at his house that I met my wife.”
“Aye,” said Semple, with dispassionate brevity.
CHAPTER XXIV
WHEN he had parted with Semple, at a corner where the busy broker, who had walked out with him, obviously fidgeted to get away, Thorpe could think of no one else in the City whom he desired to see. A call upon his bankers would, he knew, be made an occasion of extremely pleasant courtesy by those affable people, but upon reflection it seemed scarcely worth the trouble.
He was in a mood for indolent sauntering, and he made the long stretch of the Holborn thoroughfare in a leisurely fashion, turning off when the whim seized him into odd courts and alley-ways to see what they were like. After luncheon, he continued his ramble, passing at last from St. Giles, through avenues which had not existed in the London of his boyhood, to the neighbourhood of the Dials. Here also the landmarks seemed all changed, but there was still enough ostentatious squalor and disorder to identify the district. He observed it and its inhabitants with a certain new curiosity. A notable alteration for the better had come over his spirits. It might be the champagne at luncheon, or it might be the mere operation of a frank talk with Semple, that had dissipated his gloom. At all events it was gone—and he strolled along in quite placid contentment, taking in the panorama of London's more intimate life with the interest of a Londoner who has obtained a fresh country eye.