“I will if I can,” said Mr. Channing, with some approach to gaiety. “I should not have gone to the expense of coming here, but that I had great hopes of the result.”
“Expense, you call it! I call it a marvel of cheapness.”
“For your pocket. Cheap as it is, it will tell upon mine: but, if it does effect my restoration, I shall soon repay it tenfold.”
“‘If,’ again! It will effect it, I say. What shall you do with Hamish, when you resume your place at the head of your office?”
“Let me resume it first, Huntley.”
“There you go! Now, if you were only as sanguine and sure as you ought to be, I could recommend Hamish to something good to-morrow.”
“Indeed! What is it?”
“But, if you persist in saying you shall not get well, or that there’s a doubt whether you will get well, where’s the use of my doing it? So long as you are incapacitated, Hamish must be a fixture in Guild Street.”
“True.”
“So I shall say no more about it at present. But remember, my old friend, that when you are upon your legs, and have no further need of Hamish—who, I expect, will not care to drop down into a clerk again, where he has been master—I may be able to help him to something; so do not let anticipations on his score worry you. I suppose you will be losing Constance soon?”