very important?'

'Oh, very important!' she laughed archly, reddening, and then was gone;
and Aunt Hannah followed her to the door.

'What th' old folks lose,' murmured Meshach, apparently to the fire, as
he put his half-consumed cigar into a meerschaum holder, 'goes to the
profit of young Burgess, as is waiting outside the Bank at top o' th'
Square.'

'I see,' said Twemlow, and thought primly that in his day such laxities
were not permitted.

Hannah and the servant cleared the tea-table, and the two men were left
alone, each silently reducing an J.S. Murias to ashes. Meshach seemed to
grow smaller in his padded chair by the hob, to become torpid, and to
lose that keen sense of his own astuteness which alone gave zest to his
life. Arthur stared out of the window at the confined backyard. The
autumn dusk thickened.

Suddenly Meshach sprang up and lighted the gas, and as he adjusted the
height of the flame, he remarked casually: 'So your sister Alice is as
poorly off as ever?'

Twemlow assented with a nod. 'By the way,' he said, 'you told me on
Wednesday you had something interesting to show me.'

Meshach made no answer, but picked up the poker and struck several times
a large pewter platter on the mantelpiece.