ing good from evil; and now to what a pass had he brought himself!
And that man Fothergill had put all this before him in so terribly clear a light! Now that the day for his final demolishment had arrived, the necessity that he should be demolished—finished away at once, out of sight and out of mind—had not been softened, or, as it were, half hidden by any ambiguous phrase. "You have had your cake, and eaten it—eaten it greedily. Is not that sufficient for you? Would you eat your cake twice? Would you have a succession of cakes? No, my friend, there is no succession of these cakes for those who eat them greedily. Your proposition is not a fair one, and we, who have the whip-hand of you, will not listen to it. Be good enough to vanish. Permit yourself to be swept quietly into the dunghill. All that there was about you of value has departed from you; and allow me to say that you are now—rubbish." And then the ruthless besom comes with irresistible rush, and the rubbish is swept into the pit, there to be hidden forever from the sight.
And the pity of it is this—that a man, if he will only restrain his greed, may eat his cake and yet have it; ay, and in so doing will have twice more the flavor of the cake than he who with gormandizing maw will devour his dainty all at once. Cakes in this world will grow by being fed on, if only the feeder be not too insatiate. On all which wisdom Mr. Sowerby pondered with sad heart and very melancholy mind as he walked away from the premises of Messrs. Gumption and Gagebee.
His intention had been to go down to the House after leaving Mr. Fothergill, but the prospect of immediate ruin had been too much for him, and he knew that he was not fit to be seen at once among the haunts of men. And he had intended also to go down to Barchester early on the following morning—only for a few hours, that he might make farther arrangements respecting that bill which Robarts had accepted for him. That bill—the second one—had now become due, and Mr. Tozer had been with him.
"Now it ain't no use in life, Mr. Sowerby," Tozer had said. "I ain't got the paper myself, nor didn't 'old it not two hours. It went away through Tom Tozer; you knows that, Mr. Sowerby, as well as I do."
Now, whenever Tozer, Mr. Sowerby's Tozer, spoke of
