There Mr. Swanland stood by the window, looking over a cheerful view of wet slates and tiles and grotesque chimney-pots; but he turned his eyes away from this prospect as Mr. Asherill entered.
"I waited to tell you I have agreed to act in that matter," he said, thrusting his right hand far down in his trousers' pocket, as was his habit when not quite at ease.
"So Bailey informed me. I met him," was the reply.
"There will be something to the good I fancy," remarked Mr. Swanland, feeling his way with his accustomed caution. Although he meant, at some not remote period, to be sole master in the firm, still as yet he was only a junior, and unlike some juniors, who ruin their prospects for want of thought, Mr. Swanland remembered this fact.
"To the good for whom?" inquired Mr. Asherill sharply; "for us, for the creditors, or for Mortomley?"
"I have been accustomed to regard the good of one as the good of all," said Mr. Swanland, with a touching appearance of sincerity Mr. Asherill himself might have envied.
"I am sorry you undertook the business," observed the senior, shifting his ground from theory to fact.
"Why, you left me to undertake it," expostulated Mr. Swanland.
"I left you to refuse it," said Mr. Asherill emphatically. "I did not, for I could not, send back a message to Forde telling him to do his dirty work for himself, or get some one else to do it. I wanted to be rid, civilly, of the business, and I thought you would understand that."
"I certainly did not understand it," Mr. Swanland replied. "I thought you wished that estate to be wound up in our office, though you did not care, for some reason or other, to be brought forward prominently in it yourself. If I have done wrong, I am sorry for it. All I can say is, I did wrong with the best intentions."