"Even if it is all, it's a pretty big all."
"About the thousand pounds. As I said, I'll give you any sort of bond you like, undertaking, if you stick to me, to pay you the moment I get the money in my hands. Anyhow you know that you'll be safe. It's not bad pay for what I'm asking you to do."
"I don't say it is. When do you propose to start?"
"To-morrow morning, by the ten o'clock train from King's Cross. I planned it all out before I came."
"That's quick work."
"It'll have to be quick work. If I don't have money, and plenty of it, within forty-eight hours, I'm undone."
"I understand. By the way, I presume that you're prepared to pay all out-of-pocket expenses, for both parties, as we go on. For instance, I shall require you to hand me a return ticket to wherever we are going before I set foot inside the train. I'm a poor man, although you sometimes amuse yourself by pretending to think otherwise, and I, at any rate, can afford to take no risks."
"You shall have your ticket, and I'll pay everything. I've the money to do it--but it's about as much as I have got."
"Ah, but by to-morrow, about this time, you'll be more than a millionaire. I've always understood that that wonderful quarter of a million of Mr. Grahame's produced, on an average, more than twenty per cent.; so that if you had a million, averaging a modest three per cent.--and some millionaires would be glad to get as much--your income would be less. Then there are the arrears, which have been accruing! Think of the arrears, Mrs. Lamb--on a quarter of a million, at twenty per cent.! Now if you will sit down here, and will give me, on this sheet of paper, that little undertaking you mentioned, I think that, on my part, I can undertake to accompany you on your little trip to the north."