“But they’re marked down at one and an eighth.”
“Oh yes, but that doesn’t mean anything. You can’t get that for them.”
Philip did not say anything for a moment. He was trying to collect himself.
“D’you mean to say they’re worth nothing at all?”
“Oh, I don’t say that. Of course they’re worth something, but you see, nobody’s buying them now.”
“Then you must just sell them for what you can get.”
Macalister looked at Philip narrowly. He wondered whether he was very hard hit.
“I’m awfully sorry, old man, but we’re all in the same boat. No one thought the war was going to hang on this way. I put you into them, but I was in myself too.”
“It doesn’t matter at all,” said Philip. “One has to take one’s chance.”
He moved back to the table from which he had got up to talk to Macalister. He was dumfounded; his head suddenly began to ache furiously; but he did not want them to think him unmanly. He sat on for an hour. He laughed feverishly at everything they said. At last he got up to go.