all events, if FitzGerald was right, I can say that Dr. Dick Worthington
is not atavistic in this particular!

Mr. Spalding's opinion inclined FitzGerald to make no difficulty about
finding the money for the _Henrietta_. He lodged it at his bankers' for
Posh to draw when occasion required. But Posh seems to have been a
little in advance. There is no heading whatever to the following letter.

"DEAR POSH,

"I don't understand your letter. That which I had on _Friday_,
enclosing Mr. Craigie's, said that you had not _drawn_ the money, your
letter of _To-day_ tells me that you _had_ drawn the money, _before
the Letter from Southwold_ came. Was not that letter Mr. Craigie's
letter?

"Anyhow, I think you ought not (after all I have said) to have drawn
the money (to keep in your house) till you wanted it. And you could
have got it at the Bank _any_ morning on which you got _another_
letter from Southwold, telling you the business was to be settled.

"Moreover, I think you should have written me on _Saturday_, in answer
to my letter. You are very good in attending to any letters of mine
about stores, or fish, which I don't care about. But you somehow do
not attend so regularly to things which I _do_ care about, such as
gales of wind in which you are out, and such directions as I have
given over and over again about money matters.

"However, I don't mean to kick up another row; provided you _now_ do,
and at once, what I positively desire.

"Which is; to take the money directly to Mr. Barnard, and ask him, as
from _me_, to pay it to my account at Messrs. Bacon and Cobbold's Bank
at Woodbridge. Then if you tell me the address of the Auctioneer or
Agent, at Southwold who manage [_sic_] the business, Bacon and Cobbold
will write to them at _once_ that the money is ready for them directly
the Lugger is ready for you. And, write me a line to-morrow to say
that this is done.

"This makes a trouble to you, and to me, and to Bankers, but I think
you must blame yourself for not attending to my directions. But I am
yours not the less.

"E. FG.

Mr. Craigie was an old Southwold friend of the Fletcher family, with whom
Fletcher senior (Posh's father) had spent Christmas for over forty years.
The criticism of Posh's system appears, to the impartial critic, to be
both painful and true. But Posh, in this case, was not altogether to
bla