13. An Old Man’s Heart
Punctual to the moment, when the half hour’s interval had expired, Mr. Bashwood was announced at the office as waiting to see Mr. Pedgift by special appointment.
The lawyer looked up from his papers with an air of annoyance: he had totally forgotten the meeting by the roadside. “See what he wants,” said Pedgift Senior to Pedgift Junior, working in the same room with him. “And if it’s nothing of importance, put it off to some other time.”
Pedgift Junior swiftly disappeared and swiftly returned.
“Well?” asked the father.
“Well,” answered the son, “he is rather more shaky and unintelligible than usual. I can make nothing out of him, except that he persists in wanting to see you. My own idea,” pursued Pedgift Junior, with his usual, sardonic gravity, “is that he is
