"What did you tell me, Dick?"
"I asked you to mark my words—and I said, that little bounder over there wasn't going to last much longer."
The old story of Bence's approaching bankruptcy had been revived again. Marsden had heard it once more, at the Dolphin bar or in the Conservative Club billiard room, and he greedily swallowed every word of it.
He said it was a hard-boiled fact this time. One of the profligate brothers had died; the widow was taking his money out of the business; and Archibald Bence, deprived of capital without which he could not scrape along, would go phutt at any minute.
"There, old girl, I thought it would buck you up to hear such news, so I ran in to tell you. But now I must be off."
And then, in his unusual good temper, he noticed the difficulties under which she was labouring.
"I say, you don't seem very comfortable with all your papers spread out on chairs like that. It looks so infernally messy—but I suppose you haven't space for them on your table."
"I could do with more space, certainly."
"Very well. You can sit at my desk—when I am not here. But don't fiddle about with anything in the drawers;" and he laughed. "You'd better not pry among my papers, or you may get your fingers snapped off. The whole damned thing shut up with a bang when I was looking for something in a hurry the other day."
She wondered if there could be any valid reason for the persistent recurrence of these stories of financial shakiness behind their rival's outward show of prosperity. Were these little puffs of smoke, appearing and disappearing so frequently, indicative of latent fire? She asked Mr. Mears what he thought about the gossip carried in such triumph by her credulous husband.