“Tell them I will see them in ten minutes,” said the banker.
But the old man was still unappeased. “That’s what we’re coming to, is it?” he fumed. “Confound their impudence,” wiping his brow, “and they’ve put me out, too! I dunno where I was. Is the door closed? Oh, ’bout my nephew! I didn’t wish it, I’ve said that, and I’ve said it often, but he’s in. He’s in with you, banker, and he’s lugged me in! For, loth as I am to see him in it, I’m still lother that any one o’ my name or my blood should be pointed at as the man that’s lost the countryside their money! Trade’s bad, out of its place. But trade that fails at other folks’ cost and ruins a sight of people who, true or false, will say they’ve been swindled——”
“Stop!” the banker could bear it no longer, and he stepped forward, his face pale. “No one has swindled here! No one has been robbed of his money. No one—if it will relieve your feelings to know it, Mr. Griffin will lose by the bank in the end. I shall pay all demands within a few weeks at most.”
“Can you pay ’em all to-day?” asked the Squire, at his driest.
“It may be that I cannot. But every man to whom the bank owes a penny will receive twenty shillings in the pound and interest, within a few weeks—or months.”
“And who will be the loser, then, if the bank closes? Who’ll lose, man?”
“The bank. No one else.”
“But you can’t pay ’em to-day, banker?”
“That may be.”
“How much will clear you? To pay ’em all down on the nail,” truculently, “and tell ’em all to go and be hanged? Eh? How much do you need for that?”