"Give you fifty more than he's given to make it over to me. You won't, of course not, you silly feller! it's only my joke. But look here, mind you give me the refusal of the next. I can do better for you than Caniche. He's a poor paltry chap. I go in for great things,--that's my way, Mr. Bowker."
"Is it?" growled old William over his pipe; "then you go in also for great pay, Mr. Stompff, I suppose?"
"Ask your friend Ludlow about that. He'll tell you whether I pay handsomely or not, sir.--By the way, how is your friend Ludlow Potts?"
There was something in his tone and in the expression of his eyes which made Mr. Potts say:
"Mrs. Ludlow is going on very well, I believe," in a tone of seriousness very unusual with Charley.
"That's all right," said Mr. Stompff. "Going on very well, eh? Every body will be glad to hear that, and Ludlow in partickler. Going on very well--in a regular domestic quiet manner, eh? That's all right. Hasn't been much used to the domestic style before her marriage, I should think, eh?"
"Whatever you may think, I should advise you not to say much, Mr. Stompff," said Bowker. "I don't think Geoff would much like hearing those things said of his wife; I'm sure I should not of mine."
"N-no; but you have not a wife; I--I mean living, Mr. Bowker," said Stompff with a sneer.
William Bowker swallowed down a great lump rising in his throat, and forcibly restrained the involuntary clenching of his fists, as he replied, "No, you're right there, Mr. Stompff; but still I repeat my advice."
"O, I shall say nothing. People will talk, you know, Whether I'm silent or not, and people will want to know who Mrs. Ludlow was before she married Ludlow, and why she's so silent and preoccupied, and why she never goes into society, and why she faints away when she looks at photograph-books, and so on. But I didn't come here to talk of Mrs. Ludlow. Now, Potts, _mon brave_, let us discuss business."
When the great man took his departure, after proposing handsome terms to Charley Potts for a three years' engagement, Bowker said; "There's more in what we were saying when that blatant ruffian came in than I thought for, Charley. The news of Geoff's domestic trouble has got wind."
"I'm afraid so. But what did Stompff mean about the fainting and the photograph-book?"
