That prayer was not answered, and indeed Dick knew in his heart of hearts that only a lingering sense of humour and no special virtue had kept him alive.

Suicide, he had persuaded himself, would be a ludicrous insult to the gravity of the situation as well as a weak-kneed confession of fear.
'Just for the fun of the thing,' he said to the cat, who had taken Binkie's place in his establishment, 'I should like to know how long this is going to last.

I can live for a year on the hundred pounds Torp cashed for me.

I must have two or three thousand at least in the Bank--twenty or thirty years more provided for, that is to say.

Then I fall back on my hundred and twenty a year, which will be more by that time.