He is helpless but keen as a knife,
and has all the important matters from the bank referred to him. I
believe that he will last a year yet, but he will scarcely allow me
out of his sight. He preaches away about business the whole day long
and says that he wants to communicate the fruits of his experience to
me before it is too late. He wishes to see you, so if you will you had
better come up."
Accordingly they went upstairs to a large and luxurious bedroom on the
first floor, where the stricken man lay upon a patent couch.
When Mr. Quest and Edward Cossey entered, a lady, old Mr. Cossey's
eldest daughter, put down a paper out of which she had been reading
the money article aloud, and, rising, informed her father that Mr.
Quest had come.
"Mr. Quest?" said the old man in a high thin voice. "Ah, yes, I want
to see Mr. Quest very much. Go away now, Anna, you can come back by-
and-by, business before pleasure--most instructive, though, that
sudden fall in American railways. But I thought it would come and I
got Cossey's clear of them," and he sniffed with satisfaction and
looked as though he would have rubbed his hands if he had not been
physically incapacitated from so doing.
Mr. Quest came forward to where the invalid lay. He was a gaunt old
man with white hair and a pallid face, which looked almost ghastly in
contrast to his black velvet skull cap.
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