She went, wondering a little for she had not been dismissed before. She sent Arthur, who, after his usual fashion, scaled the stairs at three bounds. He found the old man sitting up in the shadow of the curtains, a grotesque figure with his bandaged head. The air of the room was not so much musty as ancient, savoring of worm-eaten wood and long decayed lavender, and linen laid by in presses. On each side of the drab tester hung a dim flat portrait, faded and melancholy, in a carved wooden frame, unglazed; below each hung a sampler. “You sent for me, sir?”
“Ay. When’s that money due?”
The question was so unexpected that for a moment Arthur did not take it in. Then the blood rushed to his face. “My mother’s money, sir?”
“What else? What other money is there, that’s due? I forget things but I dunno forget that.”
“You don’t forget much, sir,” Arthur replied cheerfully. “But there’s no hurry about that.”
“When?”
“Well, in two months from the twenty-first, sir. But there is not the least hurry.”
“This is the seventeenth?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, I’ll pay and ha’ done with it. But I’ll ha’ to sell stock. East India Stock it is. What are they at, lad?”