"Why don't you open those letters, Charley?" Livingstone asked at breakfast, next morning, pointing to a pile that lay unopened by the letters plate.
"My dear boy, I haven't the heart to do it," was the reply. "They are all expressive, I know, of different phases of mercantile despair. I believe these men keep a supplicant, as Moses maintains a poet. The last appeal from my saddler was perfectly heartrending: he could not have written it himself, for he looks as tough as his own pig-skin. If he had, he would be _impayable_ in more ways than one. What can I do? I can't come down on the poor old man who has the misfortune to be my father for more supplies when rents are being reduced fifteen per cent. The tradesmen must learn to endure. They have a splendid chance of attaining the victory of suffering."
Bruce smiled complacently to himself, and then superciliously at Charley. He had just received a letter from his banker, consulting him as to the disposal of a superfluous thousand or so, and he was hesitating between some dock shares and a promising railway.
"Yes," Forrester went on, "it's very well for you to talk in that hardened way, as you did the other night, about detrimentals and second sons. I wonder how you would like to have an elder brother, a pillar of learned societies, and as tenacious of life as one of his pet zoophytes? He used to consume quantities of medicine, which was encouraging; but lately he has taken to homoeopathy, which was quite out of the match. He told me, lately, that 'four hundred a year and my pay was affluence.' Affluence!"
It is impossible to describe the cadence of plaintive indignation which he gave to the last word. The recollection of his wrongs had made him almost energetic: we listened to his eloquence in respectful surprise.
"It was adding insult to injury," answered Guy. "If Parliament does not do something for you all soon, there will be another exodus of the Parthenidæ."
Charley looked at his friend admiringly, as he always did when Guy was classical in his allusions; but the unwonted effort had evidently exhausted him, and he lapsed into silence.
We rode out that afternoon to make some calls in the neighborhood, and, in returning, Livingstone proposed a short cut through a line of gates, with a short interval of cross-country work.