"Not yet, not yet. Ring the bell; I want missy to come."
It was a servant who came in answer to the bell.
"Tell missy to come!" said Mr. Featherstone, impatiently. "What
business had she to go away?" He spoke in the same tone when Mary came.
"Why couldn't you sit still here till I told you to go? I want my
waistcoat now. I told you always to put it on the bed."
Mary's eyes looked rather red, as if she had been crying. It was clear
that Mr. Featherstone was in one of his most snappish humors this
morning, and though Fred had now the prospect of receiving the
much-needed present of money, he would have preferred being free to
turn round on the old tyrant and tell him that Mary Garth was too good
to be at his beck. Though Fred had risen as she entered the room, she
had barely noticed him, and looked as if her nerves were quivering with
the expectation that something would be thrown at her. But she never
had anything worse than words to dread. When she went to reach the
waistcoat from a peg, Fred went up to her and said, "Allow me."
"Let it alone! You bring it, missy, and lay it down here," said Mr.
Featherstone. "Now you go away again till I call you," he added, when
the waistcoat was laid down by him. It was usual with him to season
his pleasure in showing favor to one person by being especially
disagreeable to another, and Mary was always at hand to furnish the
condiment. When his own relatives came she was treated better. Slowly
he took out a bunch of keys from the waistcoat pocket, and slowly he
drew forth a tin box which was under the bed-clothes.
"You expect I am going to give you a little fortune, eh?" he said,
looking above his spectacles and pausing in the act of opening the lid.
"Not at all, sir. You were good enough to speak of making me a present
the other day, else, of course, I should not have thought of the
matter." But Fred was of a hopeful disposition, and a vision had
presented itself of a sum just large enough to deliver him from a
certain anxiety. When Fred got into debt, it always seemed to him
highly probable that something or other--he did not necessarily
conceive what--would come to pass enabling him to pay in due time. And
now that the providential occurrence was apparently close at hand, it
would have been sheer absurdity to think that the supply would be short
of the need: as absurd as a faith that believed in half a miracle for
want of strength to believe in a whole one.