Shark's check for two thousand in a fortnight, that he had wondered why other people did not follow this easy road to fortune.
Perhaps they did, he reflected: that was how they managed to keep a large family of daughters and a motor car.

But when the shark conveyed to him in unintelligible terms the fact that unless he wrote a check for two or three hundred pounds more his original stake would be lost, and when these also fell through the bottomless bucket of Messrs.

Shark & Co.

and his bankers called his attention to an overdrawn account, it began to dawn upon him that these were not the methods whereby a large family of daughters and a motor car were unprecariously maintained.

The loss did not distress him to the point of sleeplessness; his ideas as to the value of money were as vague as his notions on the rearing of babies; but he was publishing his book at his own expense, and was concerned at not being in a position to pay the poor publisher immediately.
At Mrs.Oldrieve's he found his previsions nearly all fulfilled.