“Papa, I will tell you nothing, nor shall Kate, till you have answered my question. What have you done to Charlie Somers? Where is he? where have you sent him? and how--how--how da--how could you have sent him away?” “That’s his money,” said the old gentleman, pointing to the table. “You’d better pick it up and send it to him; he might miss it afterwards. The fool thought he could lay down money with me; there’s only seventeen shillings of it,” said Mr. Tredgold contemptuously--“not change for a sovereign! But he might want it. I don’t think he had much more in his pocket, and I don’t want his small change; no, nor nobody else’s. You can pick it up and send it back.” “What does all this mean?” asked Stella in imperious tones, though her heart quaked she could scarcely tell why. “Why have you Charlie Somers’s money on your table? and why--why, have you sent him away?” Mr. Tredgold seated himself deliberately in his chair, first removing the newspaper that lay in it, folding that and placing it carefully on a stand by his side. “Well, my little girl,” he said, also taking off his spectacles and folding them before he laid them down, “that’s a very easy one to answer. I sent him away because he didn’t suit me, my dear.” “But he suited me,” cried Stella, “which is surely far more important.” “Well, my pet, you may think so, but I don’t. I gave him my reasons. I say nothing against him--a man as I know nothing of, and don’t want to know. It’s all the same who you send to me; they’ll just hear the same thing. The man I give my little girl to will have to count out shillin’ for shillin’ with me. That fellow took me at my word, don’t you see?--took out a handful of money and began to count it out as grave as a judge. But he couldn’t do it, even at that. Seventeen shillings! not as much as change for a sovereign,” said Mr. Tredgold with a chuckle. “I told him as he was an ass for his pains. Thousand pound for thousand pound down, that’s my rule; and all the baronets in the kingdom--or if they were dukes for that matter--won’t get me out of that.” “Papa, do you know what you are saying?” Stella was so utterly bewildered that she did not at all know what she was saying in the sudden arrest of all her thoughts. “I think so, pet; very well indeed, I should say. I’m a man that has always been particular about business arrangements. Business is one thing; feelings, or so forth, is another. I never let feelings come in when it’s a question of business. Money down on the table--shillin’s, or thousands, which is plainer, for thousands, and that’s all about it; the man who can’t do that don’t suit me.”