“My dear boy, it's perfectly sincere! You'll submit plans, then?”
“If you continue to want them.”
“Good! Now—oh! Tait said something about the crossings. You think the figures too low. Tait said something of the kind. Perhaps they are a little. I'll look them over again. At the same time, you realise the feasibility depends on expense. We want to be fair. But considering how much more convenient to the public this new station will be, considering the benefit of that arrangement, you think the city ought to be moderate?”
“Moderate in its generosity.”
“Ah—I don't know—I was thinking that we understood each other—that is—the situation.”
Hennion swung in his chair.
“I was thinking, Mr. Macclesfield, of the advantages of candour, and I was wondering what my father would have said about the situation. Wouldn't he have said, in his candid way, that a personal contract and the representative disposal of either city or trust properties were two transactions that had better not be mixed?”
“My dear boy, who's mixing them?”
“Well, I'm proposing to separate them. We'll take your station scheme. Considering the benefit and convenience, as you say, the city can afford to be moderate, but it can't afford any more grade crossings down there. You'll have to come in by a subway.”
Macclesfield shook his head smilingly.