Page:The Firm of Gridlestone (1890).djvu/127

Rh reckon that the market will be so affected that your father and you will be able to buy and sell in a manner that will be profitable to you, but by which you will do other people out of their money?"

"You have an unpleasant way of putting it," said Ezra, with a forced laugh; "but you have the idea right."

"I have another idea as well," roared the old soldier, flushing purple with passion. "I've an idea that if I was twinty years younger I'd see whether you'd fit through that window, Master Girdlestone. Ged! I'd have taught you to propose such a schame to a man with blue blood in his veins, you scounthrel!"

Ezra fell back in his chair. He was outwardly composed, but there was a dangerous glitter in his eye, and his face had turned from a healthy olive to a dull yellow tint.

"You won't do it?" he gasped.

"Do it! D'ye think that a man who's worn Her Majesty's scarlet jacket for twinty years would dirty his hands with such a trick? I tell ye, I wouldn't do it for all the money that iver was coined. Look here, Girdlestone, I know you, but, by the Lord, you don't know me!"

The young merchant sat silently in his chair, with the same livid colour upon his face and savage expression in his eyes. Major Tobias Clutterbuck stood at the end of the table, stooping forward so as to lean his hands upon it, with his eyes protuberant and his scanty grey fringe in a bristle with indignation.

"What right had you to come to me with such a proposal? I don't set up for being a saint, Lord knows, but, be George! I've some morals, such as they are, and I mean to stick to them. One of me rules of life has been niver to know a blackgaird, and so, me young friend, from this day forth you and I go on our own roads. Ged! I'm not particular, but 'you must draw the line somewhere,' as me frind, Charlie Monteith, of the Indian Horse, used to say when he cut his father-in-law. I draw it at you."

While the major was solemnly delivering himself of these