Peter brought the sheets down in a bundle, and placing a row of hideous walnut-wood chairs with their legs in the fender, he proceeded to tinge the fine linen sheets a deep brown.
'They are warmed through,' he said grimly, when the smell of scorched linen became intrusive.
Peter made tea in the drawing-room and spilt a good deal of boiling water on the steel fender, and then he drew the green rep curtains across the cold windows, and made up a roaring fire, and pulled a screen round the sofa. He fetched his friend's forgotten medicine from his bedroom and administered it, and told him with a lame attempt at jocosity that he should have a penny if he took it like a lamb! Peter was full of small jokes this afternoon, and full, too, of a certain restlessness which had not expended itself when he had warmed sheets and made up fires and brewed tea to the destruction of the Hulworth steel fenders. He talked cheerfully on a dozen topics of conversation current in the neighbourhood, and on Toffy's invitation he sent a servant over to Bowshott to give notice that he would stay the night, and to bring back his things.
'I have been doing up my accounts,' said Toffy, 'and I believe the saddest book I ever read is my bank-book! A man has been down from the British Museum to look at those vases in the hall, and he says that one of them alone is worth four thousands pounds!—four thousand pounds, Peter! for a vase that's eating its head off in a glass case, and might be broken any day by a housemaid, while I perish with hunger!'
'If it's money,' began Peter easily, 'you 're an idiot if you don't let me know what you want.'
And then the whole realization of his uncertain position smote him sharply and cruelly for a moment as he remembered that he did not know how he stood with the world as regards money, and that probably he was not in the position to lend a five-pound note to any one. He had accumulated through sheer laziness a certain number of large debts, the payment of which had never troubled himself or his creditors, who were only too glad to keep his name on their books; but now it seemed that if he were to have merely a younger son's portion he might even find himself in debt to his brother's estate. He had gone thoroughly with the lawyer into the will of his father, and found that everything which it was possible to tie up on the elder son had been willed to him. His own share of the patrimony if his brother were still alive would be but a small one.
He got up from his chair and walked to the window, and pulling aside the curtain looked out on the frosty garden.
'It's going to be a bitter cold night,' he said. 'I think I will just look in at your room again, and see if they have made up the fire properly.'
He returned to the drawing-room and took up two or three newspapers in turn and laid them down again, while Toffy watched him gravely.
'I 've had a bit of a jar lately,' he said at last, taking up his stand with his back to the fire near the sofa.