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A smart maidservant conducted them to the dining-room, and there, in a minute or two, they were joined by Mr. Charles. No one could have surmised from this gentleman’s appearance that he was the son of the little tradesman who stood before him; nature had given the younger Mr. Daffy a tall and shapely person, and experience of life had refined his manners to an easy assurance he would never have learnt from paternal example. His smooth-shaven visage, so long as it remained grave, might have been that of an acute and energetic lawyer; his smile, however, disturbed this impression, for it had a twinkling insolence, a raffish facetiousness, incompatible with any sober quality. He wore the morning dress of a City man, with collar and necktie of the latest fashion; his watchguard was rather demonstrative, and he had two very solid rings on his left hand.

‘Ah, dad, how do you do!’ he exclaimed, on entering, in an affected head-voice. ‘Why, what’s the matter?’

Mr. Daffy had drawn back, refusing the offered hand. With an unpleasant smile Charles turned to his other visitor.

‘Mr. Lott, isn’t it! You’re looking well, Mr. Lott; but I suppose you didn’t come here just to give me the pleasure of seeing you. I’m rather a busy man; perhaps one or the other of you will be good enough to break this solemn silence, and let me know what your game is.’

He spoke with careless impertinence, and let himself drop on to a chair. The others remained standing, and Mr. Daffy broke into vehement speech.

‘I have come here, Charles, to ask what you mean by disgracing yourself and dishonouring my name. Only yesterday, for the first time, I heard of the life you are leading. Is this how you repay me for all the trouble I took to have you well educated, and to make you an honest man? Here I find you living in luxury and extravagance–and how? On stolen money–money as much stolen as if you were a pickpocket or a burglar! A pleasant thing for me to have all my friends talking about Charles Daffy, the bookmaker and the moneylender! What right have you to dishonour your father in this way? I ask, what right have you, Charles?’

Here the speaker, who had struggled to gasp his last sentence, was overcome with a violent fit of coughing. He tottered back and sank on to a sofa.

‘Are you here to look after him?’ asked Charles of Mr. Lott, crossing his legs and nodding towards the sufferer. ‘If so, I advise you to take him away before he does himself harm. You’re a lot bigger than he is and perhaps have more sense.’

The timber-merchant stood with legs slightly apart, holding his stick and the riding-whip horizontally with both hands. His eyes were fixed upon young Mr. Daffy, and his lips moved in rather an ominous way; but he made no reply to Charles’s smiling remark.

‘Mr. Lott,’ said the tailor, in a voice still broken by pants and coughs, ‘will you speak or me? Will you say what you think of him?’

‘You’ll have to be quick about it,’ interposed Charles, with a glance at his watch. ‘I can give you five minutes; you can say a lot in that time, if you’re sound of wind.’

The timber-merchant’s eyes were very wide, and his cheeks unusually red. Abruptly he turned to Mr. Daffy.

‘Do you know my idea?’

But just as he spoke there sounded a knock at the door, and the smart maidservant cried out that a gentleman wished to see her master.

‘Who is it?’ asked Charles.

The answer came from the visitor himself, who, pushing the servant aside, broke into the room. It was a young man of no very distinguished appearance, thin, red-haired, with a pasty complexion and a scrubby moustache; his clothes were approaching shabbiness, and he had an unwashed look, due in part to hasty travel on this hot day. Streaming with sweat, his features distorted with angry excitement, he shouted as he entered, ‘You’ve got to see me, Daffy; I won’t be refused!’ In the same moment his glance discovered the two visitors, and he stopped short. ‘Mr. Lott, you here? I’m glad of it–I’m awfully glad of it. I couldn’t have wished anything better. I don’t know who this other gentleman is, but it doesn’t matter. I’m glad to have witnesses–I’m infernally glad! Mr. Lott, you’ve been to my house this morning; you know what’s happened there. I had to go out of town yesterday, and this Daffy, this cursed liar and swindler, used the opportunity to sell up my furniture. He’ll tell you he had a legal right. But he gave me his word not to do anything till the end of the month. And, in any case, I don’t really owe him half the sum he has down against me. I’ve paid that black-hearted scoundrel hundreds of pounds–honourably paid him–debts of honour, and now he has the face to charge me sixty per cent, on money I was fool enough to borrow from him! Sixty per cent.–what do you think of that, Mr. Lott? What do you think of it, sir?’