The little man whipped over the leaves of the ledger, as though looking for something that he could not find.
“It seems a beastly shame,” he said, presently.
“Shame?”
“Yes, this sort of smash-up of a youngster’s life. They call it Providence, or the Divine Will, or something of that sort, don’t they? Must say I can’t stick that sort of bosh.”
Murchison was wringing his hands fiercely in the folds of the rough towel.
“It is a natural judgment, I suppose,” he said.
“A judgment?”
“It was my fault that the child ever came here. It need not have been so—” and he broke off with a savage twisting of the mouth.
John Tugler ran one finger slowly across a blank space in the ledger.
“Don’t take it that way,” he said, slowly; “it doesn’t help a man to curse himself because a damned bug of a bacillus breeds in this holy horror of a town. Curse the British Constitution, the law-mongers, or the local money shufflers who’d rather save three farthings than clean their slums.”