"Couldn't you help him, father?" she repeated, seeing that her father did not at once reply, but was sitting meditating, with a not altogether ill-pleased expression of face. "Help him!" cried old Max. "Why should I help him? A reprobate, unregenerate, vain, ungrateful worldling! I did help him once, and earned much gratitude for my pains. And what a sneaking, poor, mean, pitiful fellow he must be to come here and whine to you! A poor, pitiful fellow! Talk of a gentleman! Yah!" Old Max derived so much grim satisfaction from the contemplation of Algernon's pitiful behaviour that it seemed almost to soften him towards the culprit, in whom any glimpse of nobility would not have been very welcome to his enemy. When you hate a man on excellent private grounds, it is certainly unpleasant to see him displaying qualities in public which win a fallacious admiration. And this aggravation was one which old Max had been suffering for some time at the hands of the popular Algernon. His present money difficulties, combined with his unworthy methods of meeting them, at once gratified and justified Jonathan Maxfield's vindictiveness. He gave forth the queer grunting noise that served him for a laugh, as he said, "And a lot o' good his fine marriage has done him! And his grand relations! I told him long ago that if he wanted help from such as them, he must ask it with a pocket full of money. Then he might ha' been uplifted into high places. And it wasn't only my own wisdom neither, though that might ha' been enough for such a half-fledged young cockerel as he was in them days, seeing it has been enough for his betters before now. I had the warrant of Scripture; for what says Solomon? 'Wealth maketh many friends; but the poor is separated from his neighbour.'" Still Rhoda did not altogether despair of inducing her father to do something for Algernon. What that something might be, or how far it was possible for her father to assist young Errington, except by simply giving or lending him money, Rhoda was ignorant. Algernon in talking to her had spoken very glibly, but, to her, very unintelligibly, of bills which were in her father's hands; and had pointed out, with an air of candour and conviction, that it would be imprudent on Mr. Maxfield's part to drive matters to extremity. It had all sounded very convincing, simply from the tone in which it was said. Many of us are astonishingly uncritical as to the coherence and cogency of words if they be but set to a good tune. Algernon himself was rather hopeful since that interview with Rhoda. It could not be, after all, that Jonathan Maxfield would actually cause him, Algernon Errington, any personal inconvenience for the sake of a sum which was really a mere trifle to Maxfield, and which appeared very trifling to Algernon under every aspect except that of being called upon to pay it.