“You are very unfeeling, Tom, to stop me at the best bits, when I had saved them up and committed them to memory: perhaps you would get vain, however, and become quite superior. What do you think of your 'kindness.' and your 'generosity,' and your 'popularity,' and your 'straightness'? You are shivering: are you cold?”
“No, no; but you haven't told me if Mrs. Beazley was kind to you: did she call between four and five?”
“Yes: how did you know the hour?”
“Oh, I.. guessed, because she... was last, wasn't she?”
“She apologised for being so late; indeed, she was afraid that she might not get round at all, but I'm so glad she came, for no one was more glowing about you: I saw, of course, that she was just repeating Mr. Beazley's opinion, for every one can see how he admires...
“Tom, you are very ungrateful, and for a punishment I'll not tell you another word. What is wrong? has any one injured you? Was it Mr. Beazley?”
“Beazley said kinder things in my office to me, in difficult circumstances too, than I ever got from any man: some day, Amy, I'll tell you what he said, but not now—I cannot—and he spent two hours canvassing for business to start me as a corn broker, and he... got it.”
“It could not be Mr. Oxley.”
“Oxley has given me a cargo to dispose of, and I never had any of his broking before; and he told me that some of my old friends were going to... to... in fact, see me through this strait, speaking a good word for me and putting things in my way.
“Yes, of course Macfarlane came to the office, and said nothing for fifteen minutes: just gripped my hand and smoked, and then he rose, and as he was leaving, he merely mentioned that Beazley and Oxley had become securities for £5,000 at the bank; he is in it, too, you may be sure.”