“I think it’s Sir Charles, sir,” Calamy answered. “It’s his jackets.”
“Ay! Well, I won’t go in, unless need be. Go you to the stables and bid ’em wait.”
Sir Charles alighted, and bidding the postillions draw off, greeted his host. “I want your advice, Squire,” he said, putting his arm through the old man’s, and, after a few ceremonial words he drew him a few paces from the door. It was a clear, mild day, and the sun was shining pleasantly. “I’m in a position of difficulty, Griffin,” he said. “You’ll tell me, I know, that I’ve only myself to thank for it, and perhaps that is so. But that does not mend matters. The position, you see, is this.” And with many apologies and some shamefacedness he explained the situation.
The Squire listened with gloomy looks, and, beyond grunting from time to time in a manner far from cheering, he did not interrupt his visitor. “Of course, I ought not to have touched the matter,” the baronet confessed, when he had finished his story. “I know what you think about that, Griffin.”
“Of course you ought not!” The Squire struck his stick on the gravel. “I warned you, man, and you wouldn’t take the warning. You wouldn’t listen to me. Why, damme, Woosenham, if we do these things, if we once begin to go on ‘Change’ and sell and buy, where’ll you draw the line? Where’ll you draw the line? How are you going to shut out the tinkers and tailors and Brummagem and Manchester men when you make yourselves no better than them! How? By Jove, you may as well give ’em all votes at once, and in ten years’ time we shall have bagmen on the Bench and Jews in the House! Aldshire—we’ve kept up the fence pretty well in Aldshire, and kept our hands pretty clean, too, and it’s been my pride and my father’s to belong to this County. We’re pure blood here. We’ve kept ourselves to ourselves, begad! But once begin this kind of thing——”
“I know, Griffin, I know,” Woosenham admitted meekly. “You were right and I was wrong, Squire. But the thing is done, and what am I to do now? If I stand by and this money is lost——”
“Ay, ay! You’ll have dropped us all into a pretty scalding pot, then!”
“Just so, just so.” The baronet had pleaded guilty, but he was growing restive under the other’s scolding, and he plucked up spirit. “Granted. But, after all, your nephew’s in the concern, Griffin. He’s in it, too, you know, and——”
He stopped, shocked by the effect of his words. For the old man had withdrawn his arm and had stepped back, trembling in all his limbs. “Not with my good will!” he cried, and he struck his stick with violence on the ground. “Never! never!” he repeated, passionately. “But you are right,” bitterly, “you are right, Woosenham. The taint is in the air, the taint of the City and the ’Change, and we cannot escape it even here—even here in this house! In the concern? Ay, he is! And I tell you I wish to heaven that he had been in his grave first!”
The other, a kindly man, was seriously concerned. “Oh. come, Squire,” he said; and he took the old man affectionately by the arm again. “It’s no such matter as all that. You make too much of it. He’s young, and the younger generation look at these things differently. After all, there’s more to be said for him than for me.”