First the Squire explained the whole
question to George at great length, and with a most extraordinary
multiplicity of detail, for he began at his first loan from the house
of Cossey and Son, which he had contracted a great many years before.
All this while George sat with a very long face, and tried to look as
though he were following the thread of the argument, which was not
possible, for his master had long ago lost it himself, and was mixing
up the loan of 1863 with the loan of 1874, and the money raised in the
severance of the entail with both, in a way which would have driven
anybody except George, who was used to this sort of thing, perfectly
mad. However he sat it through, and when at last the account was
finished, remarked that things "sartainly did look queer."
Thereupon the Squire called him a stupid owl, and having by means of
some test questions discovered that he knew very little of the details
which had just been explained to him at such portentous length, in
spite of the protest of the wretched George, who urged that they
"didn't seem to be gitting no forrader somehow," he began and went
through every word of it again.
This brought them to breakfast time, and after breakfast, George's
accounts were thoroughly gone into, with the result that confusion was
soon worse confounded, for either George could not keep accounts or
the Squire could not follow them.
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