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“Well, I’ve stacked it up with Sudie, and she may stack it up with you.” Then in a kinder tone, he added: “You catch?”

“Yes sir,” said George untruthfully.

“Why then, ’nuff’s said,” concluded the Captain of Industry, and very thoughtfully he picked his teeth with a long fine silver point which he habitually carried in his waistcoat for that purpose of the toilet. “It’s no call ter last long,” he muttered half to himself and half to the bewildered Demaine; “anyhow the pump’s sucking; and there’s no more oil,”—to elucidate which somewhat cryptic phrase Sudie begged her husband not to stand gaping there like a booby, but to sit down and understand as much of it as he could.

Whereupon in the clearest possible language, punctuated by her father’s decisive and approving nods, she translated into older idioms exactly what had happened, and exactly what it meant. They were worth just £1500 a year between them from that day onwards for—well, till there was a change.

It was not tact but nervousness that prevented George at the end of this dreadful passage from suggesting that his father-in-law could do again what he had done before, that the strain was temporary, and that he for his part hoped for the best; but his wife, who was by this time fairly well accustomed to follow his thought, was careful to point out that whatever the future might do for them, the present was dirt black, and the present meant at least two years: