‘Come, Otho, haven’t you nearly done? It is time we were moving,’ he said.
‘Yes, I’m just ready,’ replied Otho, laying down the letters. ‘They’re all right, I think.’ He never interfered with anything that Roger did; his reading the letters was a form to be gone through, for he knew absolutely nothing of business of this kind, though he could have rattled off, correctly and nimbly, the pedigrees of twoscore celebrated racers.
‘Well,’ said Gilbert, once again, ‘won’t you think about the insurance?’
‘No,’ retorted Otho, impatiently. ‘I’ve no money to spare for insurance.’
‘Turning economical with advancing years,’ observed Gilbert, with polite sarcasm. ‘Let me tell you that fire and water and bad luck never spare a man because he had not money to insure himself against them, and——’
‘How you preach!’ almost snarled Otho. ‘Tell you I don’t mean to insure. Come away.’
‘I should like to speak to you before you go,’[go,’] observed Roger, composedly.
Otho, hearing this, turned sharp upon him, grasping his whip in his hand, and the insolence in his eyes growing bolder. Gilbert looked quietly, but with equal interest.
‘What is it?’ asked Otho, his hand on the door-handle.
‘Merely that I am thinking of leaving Bradstane. To-day is the twenty-fourth;—it was the twenty-fourth when I came to you. I wish to give three months’ notice to you, as I shall leave you at the end of that time.’