“Uncle Theodore,” she says, very firmly and decidedly, “do not buy those papers!”
Ah, such courage, Downie! Who would have believed it of you who had seen you three days ago, when you sat at Maurits’s side in the chaise and seemed to shrink and grow smaller for every word he said.
Now she needs all her courage, for Maurits is angry in earnest.
“Hold your tongue!” he hisses at her, and then roars to make himself heard by Uncle Theodore, who is sitting at his desk and counting notes.
“What is the matter with you? The shares give no interest now; I have told Uncle that; but Uncle knows as well as I that they will pay. Do you think Uncle will let himself be cheated by one like me? Uncle surely understands those things better than any of us. Has it ever been my intention to give out these shares as good? Have I said anything but that for him who can wait it may be a good affair?”
Uncle Theodore says nothing; he only hands a package of notes to Maurits. He wonders if this will make the ghost speak.
“Uncle,” says the little intractable proclaimer of the truth, for it is a known fact that no one can be more intractable than those soft, delicate creature when they are in the right, “these shares are not worth a shilling and will never be. We all know it at home there.”
“Anne-Marie, you make me out a scoundrel!”
She surveys him all over as if her eyes were the moving blades of a pair of scissors, and she cuts off him bit by bit everything in which she had clothed him; and when at last she sees him in all the nakedness of egotism and selfishness, her terrible little tongue passes sentence upon him:—
“What else are you?”