“Eh! What for?” said Mr Cleland, his vanity at once in arms.
Dan Dyce looked in his alarmed and wavering eyes a moment, and thought, “What’s the use? He knows himself, they always do!”
“For fear—for fear of fat,” he said, with a little laugh, tapping with his finger on his quondam partner’s widening waistcoat. “There are signs of a prominent profile, Colin. If you go on as you’re doing it will be a dreadful expense for watch-guards.”
Colin Cleland at once became the easy-osey man again, and smiled. “Fat, man! it’s not fat,” said he, clapping himself on the waistcoat; “it’s information. Do you know, Dan, for a second, there, I thought you meant to be unkind, and it would be devilish unlike you to be unkind. I thought you meant something else. The breath of vulgar suspicion has mentioned drink.”
“It’s a pity that!” said Mr Dyce, “for a whole cask of cloves will not disguise the breath of suspicion.”
It was five years now since Colin Cleland retired among his toddy rummers, and if this were a fancy story I would be telling you how he fell, and fell, and fell; but the truth—it’s almost lamentable—is that the old rogue throve on leisure and ambrosial nights with men who were now quite ready to give the firm of Daniel Dyce their business, seeing they had Colin Cleland all to themselves and under observation. Trust estates and factorages from all quarters of the county came now to the office at the windy corner. A Christian lawyer with a sense of fun, unspotted by the world, and yet with a name for winning causes, was what the shire had long been wanting. And Daniel Dyce grew rich. “I’m making money so fast,” he said one day to his sisters (it was before Bud came), “that I wonder often what poor souls are suffering for it.”
Said Bell, “It’s a burden that’s easy put up with. We’ll be able now to get a new pair of curtains for the back bedroom.”
“A pair of curtains!” said her brother, with a smile to Ailie. “Ay, a score of pairs if they’re needed, even if the vogue was Valenciennes. Your notion of wealth, Bell, is Old Malabar’s—‘Twopence more, and up goes the cuddy!’ Woman, I’m fair rolling in wealth.”
He said it with a kind of exultation that brought to her face a look of fear and disapproval. “Don’t, Dan, don’t,” she cried—“don’t brag of the world’s dross; it’s not like you. ‘He that hasteth to be rich, shall not be innocent,’ says the Proverbs. You must be needing medicine. We should have humble hearts. How many that were high have had a fall!”
“Are you frightened God will hear me and rue His bounty?” said the brother in a whisper. “I’m not bragging; I’m just telling you.”