“Quite right, ma’am, quite right,” said Stickler, who now found time to speak, having finished his first cup of tea and second muffin; “to bow is, to say the least of it, polite and simple, and is always safe, for it commits one to nothing; but then, suppose that Fortune is impolite and refuses to return the bow, what, I ask you, would be the result?”
As Mrs Loper could not form the slightest conception what the result would be, she replied with a weak smile and a request for more sausage.
These remarks, although calculated to enlist the sympathies of Crackaby and excite the mental energies of Twitter, had no effect whatever on those gentlemen, for the latter was deeply depressed, and his friend Crackaby felt for him sincerely. Thus the black sheep remained victorious in argument—which was not always the case.
Poor Twitter! He was indeed at that time utterly crestfallen, for not only had he lost considerably by the fire—his house having been uninsured—but business in the city had gone wrong somehow. A few heavy failures had occurred among speculators, and as these had always a row of minor speculators at their backs, like a row of child’s bricks, which only needs the fall of one to insure the downcome of all behind it, there had been a general tumble of speculative bricks, tailing off with a number of unspeculative ones, such as tailors, grocers, butchers, and shopkeepers generally. Mr Twitter was one of the unspeculative unfortunates, but he had not come quite down. He had only been twisted uncomfortably to one side, just as a toy brick is sometimes seen standing up here and there in the midst of surrounding wreck. Mr Twitter was not absolutely ruined. He had only “got into difficulties.”
But this was a small matter in his and his good wife’s eyes compared with the terrible fall and disappearance of their beloved Sammy. He had always been such a good, obedient boy; and, as his mother said, “so sensitive.” It never occurred to Mrs Twitter that this sensitiveness was very much the cause of his fall and disappearance, for the same weakness, or cowardice, that rendered him unable to resist the playful banter of his drinking comrades, prevented him from returning to his family in disgrace.
“You have not yet advertised, I think?” said Crackaby.
“No, not yet,” answered Twitter; “we cannot bear to publish it. But we have set several detectives on his track. In fact we expect one of them this very evening; and I shouldn’t wonder if that was him,” he added, as a loud knock was heard at the door.
“Please, ma’am,” said the domestic, “Mr Welland’s at the door with another gentleman. ’E says ’e won’t come in—’e merely wishes to speak to you for a moment.”
“Oh! bid ’em come in, bid ’em come in,” said Mrs Twitter in the exuberance of a hospitality which never turned any one away, and utterly regardless of the fact that her parlour was extremely small.
Another moment, and Stephen Welland entered, apologising for the intrusion, and saying that he merely called with Sir Richard Brandon, on their way to the Beehive meeting, to ask if anything had been heard of Sam.