“What then?”
“Trade generally, trade depression affects every one; the failure of one makes bad debts for the other. It was bad debts that did it. It was very stupid of me, but I was worried at home: those fortune-hunters from the villas—my daughters are very young, and since their poor mother died they have had no one to look after them. Willy, too, is a great trial to me. Poor boy, he is most anxious to do something, but things don’t go right with him; he thought he was going to do a good thing in a Bond Street shop that was converted into a company, but he lost two thousand pounds.”
“I thought he was in the distillery with you.”
“He was for a while, but he irritated me; he is so confoundedly methodical, everything must go into his diary, he spends half the day filling it up. Besides
