Doesn't
it take you, Will? Think of going to business every day through
lanes overhung with fruit-tree blossoms! Better that than the filth
and stench and gloom and uproar of Whitechapel--what? We might
found a village for our workpeople--the ideal village, perfectly
healthy, every cottage beautiful. Eh? What? How does it strike you,
Will?"
"Pleasant. But the money?"
"We shall have enough to start; I think we shall. If not, we'll find
a moneyed man to join us."
"What about that ten thousand pounds?" suggested Warburton.
Sherwood shook his head.
"Can't get it just yet. To tell you the truth, it depends on the
death of the man's father. No, but if necessary, some one will
easily be found. Isn't the idea magnificent? How it would rile the
Government if they heard of it! Ho, ho!"
One could never be sure how far Godfrey was serious when he talked
like this; the humorous impulse so blended with the excitability of
his imagination, that people who knew him little and heard him
talking at large thought him something of a crack-brain. The odd
thing was that, with all his peculiarities, he had many of the
characteristics of a sound man of business; indeed, had it been
otherwise, the balance-sheets of the refinery must long ago have
shown a disastrous deficit. As Warburton knew, things had been
managed with no little prudence and sagacity; what he did not so
clearly understand was that Sherwood had simply adhered to the
traditions of the firm, following very exactly the path marked out
for him by his father and his uncle, both notable traders.
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