“I didn’t sleep all night,” answered Cosmo savagely.
“Yes—but how much is it?” pressed Mr Harbury with patience.
“Oh!... It doesn’t matter—so long as it’s out of reach, anyhow.”
Mr Harbury was decisive:
“It’s never any good mentioning the word money unless you speak of exact sums,” he said. Mr Harbury knew what he was talking about, and Cosmo’s hesitation began to yield: he wavered a moment, and Mr Harbury sat quite still, as fishermen do over dark smooth waters at evening.
Young men are often timorous in the presence of great sums of money; they do not understand the modern ease and fluidity, the come and go, of wealth.
Cosmo rather whispered than said, “A thousand.”
Mr Harbury smiled, so spontaneously and so brightly, that he seemed for a moment hardly older than Cosmo himself.
“My dear fellow...!” he said. “My dear fellow.”
Then his smile broke into an honest little laugh. He sat up in the deep padded chair and put one hand upon Cosmo’s knee: