“Was he?” And McNason smiled blandly, but indifferently.
“Why, yes of course he was!” and Mr. Pitt’s voice grew still warmer with feeling as he spoke—“Surely, Mr. McNason, you can’t have altogether forgotten him? He made immense business for the firm,—immense! A wonderfully active and energetic man,—never lost time or opportunity and brought us no end of valuable custom——”
“Quite right of him!” interpolated McNason,—“He did his duty, no doubt, and was paid for doing it. Well?”
Mr. Pitt played absently with his watch-chain. He was conscious that a check had been summarily put on any eloquent dissertation he might have been disposed to make concerning the past abilities and qualifications of Willie Dove.
“I thought—I fancied you might perhaps be interested,” he murmured.
“Twenty-five years is a long time, Pitt,” said McNason, slowly,—“a very long time! It is a quarter of a century. One’s interest in any man is apt to exhaust itself naturally in such a period.”
Mr. Pitt looked up quickly, and then looked down. There was something in the hard, furrowed countenance of Josiah that suggested a mental dry heat or dry cold,—any force in fact, that may be known to absorb or disperse particles of generous sentiment. Yet Pitt was not a coward, and though he stood in wholesome awe of the captious moods and whims of the great millionaire upon whom his own existence and that of his family depended, he determined not to relinquish the errand on which he was bound without a struggle.
“Well, sir,” he resumed, in accents rendered firm by a kind of inward desperation, “whether you are interested or not, I think it my duty to tell you that Willie Dove,—the man who through his energy, fidelity and tact, helped to establish the firm, is now lying seriously ill. He is nearly sixty years old, and having a large family to provide for, had been unable to put by anything for his own rainy day——”
“He should not have had a large family,”—interpolated McNason, stretching out his lean ill-shaped legs more comfortably in front of the fire—“it’s quite his own fault!”
“Perhaps,” proceeded Pitt, with considerable emphasis, “if he had been less honest and high-principled in his business connection with us, he might have been more well-to-do in his own affairs. But, as matters stand, his position is a sad one. He is afflicted with a painful disease, which, however, can be absolutely cured by an immediate surgical operation. The doctors assure him that he will be well and strong enough to live out his full measure of years comfortably and usefully if he will only submit to their treatment——”