"That's all right, too, but he isn't succeeding. It humiliates me; it hurts like hell to have to call his attention to such oversights."
"Oh, he's the gay tra-la-la," said O'Hara, indulgently; "do you think he bothers his elegant noddle about such trifles as checks? Besides he's almost as Irish as I am—God bless his mother and damn all landlords, Lester Caldera included."
"What does Quarren do with all his money, then?" mused Lacy—"soaking the public in Tappan-Zee Park and sitting up so close and snug to the rich and great!"
"It's his business," said Westguard, "to see that any check he draws is properly covered. Overdrafts may be funny in a woman, and in novels, but once is too often for any man. And this makes three times for Rix."
"Ah, thin, lave the poor la-ad be! ye could-blooded Sassenach!" said Lacy, pretending to the brogue. "Phwat the divil!—'tis the cashier ye should blame whin Rix tells him to pay, an' he refuses to projuice the long-green wad!"
But Westguard, unsmiling, consulted his memoranda, then, holding up his sheet of figures:
"There's a quorum here," he said. "Rix can read this over when he comes in, if he likes. Here's the situation." And he read off the items of liabilities and assets, showing exactly, and to a penny, how the house had been run for the past month.
Everything was there, rent, servants' wages, repairs, provisions, bills for heating and lighting, extras, incidentals—all disbursements and receipts; then, pausing for comments, and hearing none, he closed the ledger with a sharp slap.
"The roof's leakin'," observed O'Hara without particular interest.
"Write to the landlord," said Lacy—"the stingy millionaire."