"Will this do, Mr. Brown? I'm rather out of practice."
Mr. Brown signified that it would. He knew his business better than to give anything of much consequence to an unknown and untried clerk.
"Are you related to Sir Richard Yorke?" he asked of Roland.
"Yes, I am; and I'm ashamed of him. Old Dick's my uncle, my late father's brother; and his son and heir, young Dick, is my cousin. Old Dick is the greatest screw alive; he'd not help a fellow to save him from hanging. He's as poor as Carrick; but I don't call that an excuse for him; his estate is mortgaged up to the neck."
Mr. Brown needed not the additional information, which Roland proffered so candidly. His nature had not changed a whit. Nay, perhaps the free and easy life at Port Natal, about which we may hear somewhat later, had only tended to render him less reticent, if that were possible. Greatorex and Greatorex were the confidential solicitors to Sir Richard Yorke, and Mr. Brown was better acquainted than Roland with the baronet's finances.
"I thought it must be so," remarked Mr. Brown. "I knew there was some connection between Sir Richard and Lord Garrick. Are you likely to stay in our office long?" he questioned, inwardly wondering that Roland with two uncles so puissant should be there at all.
"I am likely to stay for ever, for all I know. They are going to give me twenty shillings a week. I say, Mr. Brown, why do you wear a wig?"
Doubtless Mr. Brown thought the question a tolerably pointed one upon so brief an acquaintance. He settled to his work again without answering it. A hint that the clerk, just come under his wing, might return and settle to his. Which was not taken.
"My hair is as plentiful as ever it was," said Roland, giving his dark hair a push backwards. "I don't want a wig; and you can't be so very much my senior; six or seven years, perhaps. I am eight-and-twenty."
"And I am three-and-thirty, sir. My hair came off in a fever a few years back, and it does not grow again. Be so good as to get on with what you have to do, Mr. Yorke."