Are you seriously taking him up ?" Yet again, at the tone of this appeal, the old man perceptibly coloured.
It was as if his friend had brought to the surface an inward excitement, and he laughed for embarrassment.

"You see things with a freedom--" "Yes, and it's so I express them.

I see them, I know, with a raccourci; but time after all rather presses, and at any rate we understand each other.

What I want now is just to say"-- and Mitchy spoke with a simplicity and a gravity he had not yet used--"that if your interest in him should at any time reach the point of your wishing to do something or other (no matter what, don't you see ?) FOR him--!" Mr.Longdon, as he faltered, appeared to wonder, but emitted a sound of gentleness.

"Yes ?" "Why," said the stimulated Mitchy, "do, for God's sake, just let me have a finger in it." Mr.Longdon's momentary mystification was perhaps partly but the natural effect of constitutional prudence.