“Oh! Mr. Harthouse,” said Tom with a groan, “I am hard up, and bothered out of my life.”

“My good fellow, so am I.”

“You!” returned Tom. “You are the picture of independence. Mr. Harthouse, I am in a horrible mess. You have no idea what a state I have got myself into⁠—what a state my sister might have got me out of, if she would only have done it.”

He took to biting the rosebuds now, and tearing them away from his teeth with a hand that trembled like an infirm old man’s. After one exceedingly observant look at him, his companion relapsed into his lightest air.

“Tom, you are inconsiderate: you expect too much of your sister. You have had money of her, you dog, you know you have.”