But for yourself I am glad,
since although Aylward and Haswell have put a big thing through and are
going to make a pot of money, this is no place for the likes of you,
and now that you are going I will make bold to tell you that I always
wondered what you were doing here. By and by, Major, the row will come,
as it has come more than once in the past, before your time."
"And then?" said Alan, for he was anxious to get to the bottom of this
man's mind, which hitherto he had always found so secret.
"And then, Major, it won't matter much to Messrs. Aylward and
Champers-Haswell, who are used to that kind of thing and will probably
dissolve partnership and lie quiet for a bit, and still less to folk
like myself, who are only servants. But if you were still here it would
have mattered a great deal to you, for it would blacken your name and
break your heart, and then what's the good of the money? I tell you,
Major," the clerk went on with quiet intensity, "though I am nobody and
nothing, if I could afford it I would follow your example. But I can't,
for I have a sick wife and a family of delicate children who have to
live half the year on the south coast, to say nothing of my old mother,
and--I was fool enough to be taken in and back Sir Robert's last little
venture, which cost me all I had saved.
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