“Well, I don’t want to be worried with these matters: it’s enough for me to think of poor Valentine’s things. Only two days now before he starts. And what wretched weather it is!”
“Valentine says he shall not take much luggage with him. He saw me counting his shirts, and he said they were too many by half.”
“And who will supply him with shirts out there, do you suppose?” demanded Mrs. Chandler. “You talk nothing but nonsense, Julietta. Where is Valentine? He ought to be here, with all this packing to do. He must have been gone out these two hours.”
“He said he had business at Islip.”
Mrs. Chandler looked gloomy at the answer. She hated the very name of Islip: partly because they held no longer any part in the place, partly because the Bell was in it.
But Valentine had not gone to the Bell this time. His visit was to his cousin Tom; and his errand was to beg of Tom to give or lend him a fifty-pound note before sailing.
“I shall have next to nothing in my pocket, Tom, when I land,” he urged, as the two sat together in Tom’s private room. “If I get on over there, I will pay you back. If I don’t—well, perhaps you won’t grudge having helped me for the last time.”
For a moment Tom did not answer. He sat before his desk-table, Valentine near him: just as Valentine had one day sat at his desk in his private room, and Tom had been the petitioner, not so many years gone by. Valentine looked upon the silence as an ill-omen.
“You have all the business that once was mine in your fingers now, Tom. It has left me for you.”