"All U.P. with Ken, of course," Turner went on. "I hope to God he'll make some sort of a do of it in South Africa. He might—one never knows. I wish I could have done more to help him."
"Absolutely impossible to do anything," Joe Kenyon said, looking out of the window. "Fact was he didn't really want Ken. Got a strong streak of Jim in him. I've noticed it before. He'll do all right, I expect. Jim would have, in time. He had bad luck, that was all. Damned sorry for you and Catherine all the same."
"Wish to God I could go with him," Turner said. His brother-in-law thrust out his under-lip and shook his head. "Too soft for that kind of life," he murmured, still staring out of the window.
Turner chose to overlook that remark. "It's this cursed lack of ready money that beats you every time," he grumbled, as he paced up and down. "No getting round that anyway. We couldn't raise five hundred pounds between us to save our eternal souls."
Hubert, leaning against the end of the massive oak table that stood in the centre of the room, solemnly nodded his head. "Not three hundred," he said judicially.
Turner looked at him for an instant, but made no reply.
"Nothing whatever to be done," he went on. "We know that by this time. No need for him to show his fangs again to teach us that."
"Glad to have the opportunity all the same," Joe Kenyon put in.
Arthur, despite his immense preoccupation with the thought of Eleanor, could not help listening. They had never hitherto spoken as frankly as this before him. "Do you mean," he put in, "that he is sort of intimidating you by going up to town?" He did not realise until he had spoken that by saying "you" instead of "us" he had implied the separateness of his own interest in the affair.