THE MAN. She'd have died first. Besides, who wanted your money? Do you suppose we lived in the gutter? My father maynt have been in as large a way as you; but he was better connected; and his shop was as respectable as yours. TARLETON. I suppose your mother brought him a little capital. THE MAN. I dont know. Whats that got to do with you? TARLETON. Well, you say she and I knew one another and parted. She must have had something off me then, you know. One doesnt get out of these things for nothing. Hang it, young man: do you suppose Ive no heart? Of course she had her due; and she found a husband with it, and set him up in business with it, and brought you up respectably; so what the devil have you to complain of? THE MAN. Are women to be ruined with impunity? TARLETON. I havnt ruined any woman that I'm aware of. Ive been the making of you and your mother. THE MAN. Oh, I'm a fool to listen to you and argue with you. I came here to kill you and then kill myself. TARLETON. Begin with yourself, if you dont mind. Ive a good deal of business to do still before I die. Havnt you? THE MAN. No. Thats just it: Ive no business to do. Do you know what my life is? I spend my days from nine to six--nine hours of daylight and fresh air--in a stuffy little den counting another man's money. Ive an intellect: a mind and a brain and a soul; and the use he makes of them is to fix them on his tuppences and his eighteenpences and his two pound seventeen and tenpences and see how much they come to at the end of the day and take care that no one steals them. I enter and enter, and add and add, and take money and give change, and fill cheques and stamp receipts; and not a penny of that money is my own: not one of those transactions has the smallest interest for me or anyone else in the world but him; and even he couldnt stand it if he had to do it all himself. And I'm envied: aye, envied for the variety and liveliness of my job, by the poor devil of a bookkeeper that has to copy all my entries over again. Fifty thousand entries a year that poor wretch makes; and not ten out of the fifty thousand ever has to be referred to again; and when all the figures are counted up and the balance sheet made out, the boss isnt a penny the richer than he'd be if bookkeeping had never been invented. Of all the damnable waste of human life that ever was invented, clerking is the very worst. TARLETON. Why not join the territorials?