is papers with an air of annoyance: he had
totally forgotten the meeting by the roadside. "See what he wants," said
Pedgift Senior to Pedgift Junior, working in the same room with him.
"And if it's nothing of importance, put it off to some other time."

Pedgift Junior swiftly disappeared and swiftly returned.

"Well?" asked the father.

"Well," answered the son, "he is rather more shaky and unintelligible
than usual. I can make nothing out of him, except that he persists
in wanting to see you. My own idea," pursued Pedgift Junior, with his
usual, sardonic gravity, "is that he is going to have a fit, and that he
wishes to acknowledge your uniform kindness to him by obliging you with
a private view of the whole proceeding."

Pedgift Senior habitually matched everybody--his son included--with
their own weapons. "Be good enough to remember, Augustus," he rejoined,
"that my Room is not a Court of Law. A bad joke is not invariably
followed by 'roars of laughter' _here_. Let Mr. Bashwood come in."

Mr. Bashwood was introduced, and Pedgift Junior withdrew. "You mustn't
bleed him, sir," whispered the incorrigible joker, as he passed the back
of his father's chair. "Hot-water bottles to the soles of his feet,
and a mustard plaster on the pit of his stomach--that's the modern
treatment."

"Sit down, Bashwood," said Pedgift Senior when they were alone. "And
don't forget that time's money. Out with it, whatever it is, at the
quickest possible rate, and in the fewest possible words."

These preliminary directions, bluntly but not at all unkindly spoken,
rather increased than diminished the painful agitation under which Mr.
Bashwood was suffering. He stammered more helplessly, he trembled more
continuously than usual, as he made his little speech of thanks, and
added his apologies at the end for intruding on his patron in business
hours.

"Everybody in the place, Mr. Pedgift, sir, knows your time is valuable.
Oh, dear, yes! oh, dear, yes! most valuable, most valuable! Excuse me,
sir, I'm coming out with it. Your goodness--or rather your business--no,
your goodness gave me half an hour to wait--and I have thought of what
I had to say, and prepared it, and put it short." Having got as far as
that, he stopped with a pained, bewildered look. He had put it away in
his memory, and now, when the time came, he was too confused to find it.
And there was Mr. Pedgift mutely waiting; his face and manner expressive
alike of that silent se