“What the devil’s all this to do with politics?” cried Abraham, whose face had grown dark.

“I should imagine, a good deal,” returned Waymark, knocking out his pipe.  “If you’re for government, yen mustn’t be above considering details.”

“And so you think you have a hit at me, eh?  Nothing of the kind.  These are affairs of private contract, and no concern of government at all.  In private contract a man has only a right to what he’s strong enough to exact If a tenant tells me my houses ain’t fit to live in, I tell him to go where he’ll be better off’ and I don’t hinder him; I know well enough in a day or two there’ll come somebody else.  Ten to one he can’t go, and he don’t.  Then why should I be at unnecessary expense in making the places better?  As Boon as I can get no tenants I’ll do so; not till then.”

“You don’t believe in works of mere humanity?”

“What the devil’s humanity got to do with business?” cried Abraham.

“True,” was Waymark’s rejoinder.

“See, we won’t talk of these kind of things,” said Mr. Woodstock.  “That’s just what we always used to quarrel about, and I’m getting too old for quarrelling.  Got any engagement this afternoon?”

“I thought of looking in to see a friend here in the street”

“Male or female?”

“Both; man and wife.”

“Oh, then you have got some friends?  So had I when I was your age.  They go somehow when you get old.  Your father was the last of them, I think.  But you’re not much like him, except a little in face.  True, he was a Radical, but you,—­well, I don’t know what you are.  If you’d been a son of mine, I’d have had you ill Parliament by now, somehow or other.”

“I think you never had a son?” said Way mark, observing the note of melancholy which every now and then came up in the old man’s talk.

“No.”

“But you had some children, I think?”

“Yes, yes,—­they’re dead.”

He had walked to the window, and suddenly turned round with a kind of impatience.

“Never mind the friend to-day; come and have some dinner with me.  I seem to want a bit of company.”

This was the first invitation of the kind Waymark had received.  He accepted it, and they went out together.

“It’s a pleasant part this,” Mr. Woodstock said, as they walked by the river.  “One might build himself a decent house somewhere about here, eh?”

“Do you think of doing so?”

“I think of doing so!  What’s the good of a house, and nobody to live in it?”

Waymark studied these various traits of the old man’s humour, and constantly felt more of kindness towards him.