There was enough truth in this view of the case to make it very insulting to Trenholme.

But Bates did not seem to cherish anger for that part of his trouble that had been caused by this defect; rather he showed an annoying indifference to the whole affair.

He had done what he could to bury his late partner decently; he neither expressed nor appeared to experience further emotion concerning his fate.
When a man has set himself to anything, he generally sticks to it, for a time at least; this seemed to be the largest reason that Trenholme had the first four weeks for remaining where he was.

At any rate, he did remain; and from these unpromising materials, circumstance, as is often the case, beat, out a rough sort of friendship between the two men.

The fact that Bates was a partial wreck, that the man's nerve and strength in him were to some extent gone, bred in Trenholme the gallantry of the strong toward the weak--a gallantry which was kept from rearing into self-conscious virtue by the superiority of Bates's reasoning powers, which always gave him a certain amount of real authority.