Roberts: ‘Oh no, I couldn’t do that.’
Willis: ‘You might give it away to some deserving person; but if it got him into trouble—’
Roberts: ‘No, no; that wouldn’t do, either.’
Willis: ‘And you can’t have it lying around; Agnes would be sure to find it, sooner or later.’
Roberts: ‘Yes.’
Willis: ‘Besides, there’s your conscience. Your conscience wouldn’t let you keep Bemis’s watch away from him. And if it would, what do you suppose Agnes’s conscience would do when she came to find it out? Agnes hasn’t got much of a head—the want of it seems to grow upon her; but she’s got a conscience as big as the side of a house.’
Roberts: ‘Oh, I see; I see.’
Willis, coming up and standing over him, with his hands in his pockets: ‘I tell you what, Roberts, you’re in a box.’
Roberts, abjectly: ‘I know it, Willis; I know it. What do you suggest? You must know some way out of it.’
Willis: ‘It isn’t a simple matter like telling them to start the elevator down when they couldn’t start her up. I’ve got to think it over.’ He walks to and fro, Roberts’s eyes helplessly following his movements. ‘How would it do to—No, that wouldn’t do, either.’