Read it through once

I was in a kind of agony. I was right on the point of coming out with the words, ‘Lloyd, I’m a pauper myself—absolutely penniless, and in _debt_!’ But a white-hot idea came flaming through my head, and I gripped my jaws together, and calmed myself down till I was as cold as a capitalist. Then I said, in a commercial and self-possessed way: