Book the Third Chapter 13 An Old Man's Heart

Punctual to the moment, when the half hour's interval had expired, Mr. Bashwood was announced at the office as waiting to see Mr. Pedgift by special appointment.

The lawyer looked up from his papers with an air of annoyance: he had totally forgotten the meeting by the roadside. "See what he wants," said Pedgift Senior to Pedgift Junior, working in the same room with him. "And if it's nothing of importance, put it off to some other time."

Pedgift Junior swiftly disappeared and swiftly returned.

"Well?" asked the father.

"Well," answered the son, "he is rather more shaky and unintelligible than usual. I can make nothing out of him, except that he persists in wanting to see you. My own idea," pursued Pedgift Junior, with his usual, sardonic gravity, "is that he is going to have a fit, and that he wishes to acknowledge your uniform kindness to him by obliging you with a private view of the whole proceeding."

Pedgift Senior habitually matched everybody--his son included--with their own weapons. "Be good enough to remember, Augustus," he rejoined, "that my Room is not a Court of Law. A bad joke is not invariably followed by 'roars of laughter' here. Let Mr. Bashwood come in."

Mr. Bashwood was introduced, and Pedgift Junior withdrew. "You mustn't bleed him, sir," whispered the incorrigible joker, as he passed the back of his father's chair. "Hot-water bottles to the soles of his feet, and a mustard plaster on the pit of his stomach--that's the modern treatment."