"
"No, it seems fair enough."
"It is not pleasant to have to go hat in hand borrowing money, but there
are times, as you may find before you are my age, Westmacott, when a man
must stow away his pride. But here's their number, and their plate is
on the corner of the door."
A narrow entrance was flanked on either side by a row of brasses,
ranging upwards from the shipbrokers and the solicitors who occupied the
ground floors, through a long succession of West Indian agents,
architects, surveyors, and brokers, to the firm of which they were in
quest. A winding stone stair, well carpeted and railed at first but
growing shabbier with every landing, brought them past innumerable doors
until, at last, just under the ground-glass roofing, the names of Smith
and Hanbury were to be seen painted in large white letters across a
panel, with a laconic invitation to push beneath it. Following out the
suggestion, the Admiral and his companion found themselves in a dingy
apartment, ill lit from a couple of glazed windows. An ink-stained
table, littered with pens, papers, and almanacs, an American cloth sofa,
three chairs of varying patterns, and a much-worn carpet, constituted
all the furniture, save only a very large and obtrusive porcelain
spittoon, and a gaudily framed and very somber picture which hung above
the fireplace.
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