He sounded the bell.
"Bring in Mr. Jolyon's Will," he said to an anxious, dark-haired clerk.
"You going to make some alterations?" And through his mind there flashed
the thought: 'Now, am I worth as much as he?'
Old Jolyon put the Will in his breast pocket, and James twisted his long
legs regretfully.
"You've made some nice purchases lately, they tell me," he said.
"I don't know where you get your information from," answered old Jolyon
sharply. "When's this action coming on? Next month? I can't tell what
you've got in your minds. You must manage your own affairs; but if you
take my advice, you'll settle it out of Court. Good-bye!" With a cold
handshake he was gone.
James, his fixed grey-blue eye corkscrewing round some secret anxious
image, began again to bite his finger.
Old Jolyon took his Will to the offices of the New Colliery Company,
and sat down in the empty Board Room to read it through. He answered
'Down-by-the-starn' Hemmings so tartly when the latter, seeing his
Chairman seated there, entered with the new Superintendent's first
report, that the Secretary withdrew with regretful dignity; and sending
for the transfer clerk, blew him up till the poor youth knew not where
to look.
It was not--by George--as he (Down-by-the-starn) would have him know,
for a whippersnapper of a young fellow like him, to come down to that
office, and think that he was God Almighty.
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