If
Carew should happen to change his mind, it would be because he was in
want of ready money, and he would be in mad haste to get it. His
impatience on such occasions brooked no delay on the score of advantage;
and the man that could offer him what he wanted, as it were, in his open
hand, would be the financier he would favor in preference to a much less
grasping accommodator, who might keep him waiting for a week. It was not
so much the tempting bait of ready money that caught the Squire as the
fact of his wishes being obeyed upon the instant. He had not been used
to wait, and his pride revolted against it; and many a time had a usurer
missed his mark by not understanding with how great a bashaw he had to
deal in the person of Carew of Crompton. Trevethick was aware of this,
and indeed the chaplain had given him a hint to keep the proposed
purchase-money within easy reach, in case the Squire's mood might alter,
or his necessities demand his consent to what Mr. Whymper honestly
believed to be a very advantageous offer. Otherwise, Trevethick was not
one to keep a hoard in his house for the mere pleasure of gloating over
it. He had not looked into his strong-box for months, nor would he have
done so now, but for this unexpected demand upon it. It was safe enough,
he knew, in his daughter's room; and as for its having been opened, that
was an impossibility; the padlock hung in front of it as usual, and it
would have taken a man half a lifetime to have hit upon its open sesame
by trial.
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