“I’d black your boots for you, why shouldn’t I be dependent on you? I’ll take your offer, and—and—and—”
“I told you the conditions, I shall stick to them, we don’t thank one another or get emotional in these transactions, I mean to have my money back, principal and interest, my full pound of flesh. I’m doing a trade with you—take it or leave it, as you like.”
“Do you know I’d die for you?” cried Brydon, in a burst of low-diet mawkishness.
“Die, before you’ve paid in a penny of your premium! If we can come to terms off-hand, I should like to finish up the matter at once, and start for my lawyer’s.”
Brydon got up without a word, and began to make himself decent with shaking hands. At last he found safety in a wild burst of gaiety and by the time he had his best coat on, he was bubbling over with a nervous gentle sort of fun peculiar to his kind.
When they were going downstairs he stopped, and remarked in a soft deprecatory sort of way,
“I say! I believe my heart’s next to gone. Three goes of rheumatic fever leaves that part of a fellow not worth mentioning. Won’t that make the premium pretty stiff?”
“Probably, I never thought of that. However, it’s you will have to pay the piper, not I.”
“You’re an artist in conferring favours—”
“Oh, for Heaven’s sake, stow that!”