‘Pretty flatterer!’ said Rose.
‘He wants to cut me out,’ said Wentworth. ‘He was always envious of my superior abilities.’
‘As he had every reason to be,’ said Rose.
‘Come, that’s too bad,’ said Buxton, turning to Rose, ‘after the way in which I buttered you up just now. Two to one ain’t fair. But to return to business.’
‘Hear, hear,’ said Wentworth.
‘If I had a family—which, thank Heaven, I have not—I would not stop in England a day. If I had a lad to plant out in the world as you have, I’d send him off to America or the Colonies to-morrow.’
‘Because?’
‘Because it’s all up in old England in the first place; and in the second place, because if it were not so, the New World offers better opportunities for a young fellow than the old. May I dwell upon these topics?’
‘Certainly, by all means.’
‘Well, I have met a good many Americans lately, and they have put new ideas into my head—’