“You don’t know what you ask.”
“I know what I want . . .”
Massy stepped in and closed the door.
“. . . And I am going to have a try for it with you once more.”
His whine was half persuasive, half menacing.
“For it’s no manner of use to tell me that you are poor. You don’t spend anything on yourself, that’s true enough; but there’s another name for that. You think you are going to have what you want out of me for three years, and then cast me off without hearing what I think of you. You think I would have submitted to your airs if I had known you had only a beggarly five hundred pounds in the world. You ought to have told me.”
“Perhaps,” said Captain Whalley, bowing his head. “And yet it has saved you.” . . . Massy laughed scornfully. . . . “I have told you often enough since.”
“And I don’t believe you now. When I think how I let you lord it over my ship! Do you remember how you used to bullyrag me about my coat and your bridge? It was in his way. His bridge! ‘And I won’t be a party to this—and I couldn’t think of doing that.’ Honest man! And now it all comes out. ‘I am poor, and I can’t. I have only this five hundred in the world.’”
He contemplated the immobility of Captain Whalley, that seemed to present an inconquerable obstacle in his path. His face took a mournful cast.
“You are a hard man.”