“Did you get it?”
“Of course I did. I wanted to pay Simms, and one or two more trifles that were pressing; I was not going to have the fellow here after me again. I wish such a thing as money had never been invented!”
“You may as well wish we could live without eating.”
“So I do, sometimes—when I go home, expecting a good dinner, and there’s only some horrid cold stuff upon the table. There never was a worse housekeeper than Lady Augusta. It’s my belief, our servants must live like fighting cocks; for I am sure the bills are heavy enough, and we don’t get the benefit of them.”
“What made you so late this afternoon?” asked Arthur.
“I went round to pay Simms, for one thing; and then I called in upon Hamish, and stayed talking with him. Wasn’t he in a sea of envy when I told him I had been scoring off that Simms! He wished he could do the same.”
“Hamish does not owe anything to Simms!” cried Arthur, with hasty retort.
“Doesn’t he?” laughed Roland Yorke. “That’s all you know about it. Ask him yourself.”
“If you please, sir,” interposed Mr. Jenkins, at this juncture, “I shall soon be waiting for that paper. Mr. Galloway directed me to send it off by post.”
“Bother the paper!” returned Roland; but, nevertheless, he applied himself to complete it. He was in the habit of discoursing upon private topics before Jenkins without any reserve, regarding him as a perfect nonentity.