text: Hot, dusty, and conventionally empty as London now was, and stifling as was the confined air of St Nicholas Poultney, Mr Enoch Wilkins was in gay good-humour. He shewed it by the urbanity with which he was dismissing a shabby-genteel man of middle age, to whose remonstrances he had listened with a bland semi-serious patience unusual to him.
  ‘Now, really, Mr Greening, really we must have no more of this,’ he said, shewing his white{197} front teeth in an affable smile. ‘“Can’t pay” and “Won’t pay” are, I fancy, convertible phrases. The Loan Office cannot afford to do business on sentimental principles. And it’s all very well to say that you only had in cash nine seven eleven, as consideration for your notes of hand, amounting to—let me see.’ And the solicitor glanced at a bundle of papers on the table.
  ‘To twenty-eight pounds six and fourpence,’ said the debtor piteously; ‘two-thirds of which are for interest and commission.’
  ‘But that,’ pursued the solicitor, ‘by no means affects the legal aspect of the case. The bill of sale over your furniture is none the less valid. I didn’t quite catch your last remark.—Ah! to sell you up would be to you sheer ruin? Then, my good Mr Greening, I advise you to stave off the ruin by prompt payment, to escape the very heavy expenses to which you will otherwise be put. Good-day to you.—Now,’ he added to his clerk, ‘I will see this Mr Hold.’ And as the impecunious Greening took his melancholy leave, the sunburnt countenance of Richard Hold became visible in the doorway.
  ‘From abroad, I presume?’ said Mr Wilkins affably, as his observant eye noted the seafaring aspect of his visitor and the bronze on his cheek, which might well have become a successful Australian digger, fresh with his dust and nuggets from the gold-fields.
  ‘Well—I have been abroad; I have knocked about the world a goodish bit,’ answered Hold slowly, ‘but just latterly I’ve stayed ashore.’
  Mr Wilkins picked up the office penknife and tapped the table with the buckhorn handle of it somewhat impatiently. He did not entertain quite so high an opinion of the swarthy stranger as before. The first glance had suggested damages in a running-down case at sea; the second, some claim for salvage; the third, an investment of savings earned, according to the picturesque phrase, ‘where the gold grows.’ But the solicitor knew life well enough to be aware that those who have knocked, in Hold’s words, about the world, are rolling stones whereon seldom grows the moss of profit.
  Richard Hold was not in the least nettled at this chilling reception. His dark roving eyes made their survey of the lawyer’s surroundings, from the heavy silver inkstand to the prints on the walls, and then settled on the face of Mr Enoch Wilkins himself.
  ‘That depends,’ said Hold, with a lazy good-humour, as he leaned against the door-post nearest to him, ‘on what you call business, skipper!’
  Mr Wilkins frowned; but the words, sharp and peremptory, that rose to his lips, remained unspoken. His first idea had been that this was the saucy freak of an ill-conditioned sailor, and that a word to his clerk and a summons to the policeman on his beat hard by, would rid him of the intruder. But the man was quite sober. There must be some reason for his singular tone and bearing. Wherefore, when Mr Wilkins spoke again, it was urbanely enough: ‘If I can be of use to you professionally, sir, you may command me; at least I shall be glad to hear what you have got to say. Perhaps you feel somewhat strange in a lawyer’s office?’
  ‘I haven’t seen the inside of one since six years ago I was in trouble at Singapore about—never mind what!’ returned Hold, checking his too communicative flow of words, and then added: ‘Now I hail from Devonshire—Dartmoor way—Carbery Chase way, not to mince matters.’