Geoffrey listened and sympathised; then came a pause.
"That's how we've been getting on at Bryngelly, Mr.Bingham," Mr.
Granger said presently, "starving, pretty well starving.

It's only you who have been making money; we've been sitting on the same dock-leaf while you have become a great man.

If it had not been for Beatrice's salary--she's behaved very well about the salary, has Beatrice--I am sure I don't understand how the poor girl clothes herself on what she keeps; I know that she had to go without a warm cloak this winter, because she got a cough from it--we should have been in the workhouse, and that's where we shall be yet," and he rubbed the back of his withered hand across his eyes.
Geoffrey gasped.

Beatrice with scarcely enough means to clothe herself--Beatrice shivering and becoming ill from the want of a cloak while _he_ lived in luxury! It made him sick to think of it.

For a moment he could say nothing.
"I have come here--I've come," went on the old man in a broken voice, broken not so much by shame at having to make the request as from fear lest it should be refused, "to ask you if you could lend me a little money.