“So it has. Did you ever hear of the enterprise, at least of one worth the name, that had not its failures? or is success anything more in reality than the power of reasoning out how and why others have succumbed, and how to avoid the errors that have beset them? The men who embarked in this scheme were alike deficient in knowledge and in capital.”
“Ah, indeed!” muttered Cave, who did not exactly say what his looks implied. “Are you their superior in these requirements?”
Sir Brook was quick enough to note the expression, and hastily said, “I have not much to boast of myself in these respects, but I possess that which they never had,—that without which men accomplish nothing in life, going through the world mere desultory ramblers, and not like sturdy pilgrims, ever footing onward to the goal of their ambition. I have Faith!”
“And young Lendrick, what says he to it?”
“He scarcely shares my hopes, but he shows no signs of backwardness.”
“He is not sanguine, then?”
“Nature did not make him so, and a man can no more alter his temperament than his stature. I began life with such a capital of confidence that, though I have been an arrant spendthrift, I have still a strong store by me. The cunning fellows laugh at us and call us dupes; but let me tell you, Cave, if accounts were squared, it might turn out that even as a matter of policy incredulity has not much to boast of, and were it not so, this world would be simply intolerable.”
“I'd like, however, to hear that your mine was not all outlay,” said Cave, bringing back the theme to its starting-point.
“So should I,” said Fossbrooke, dryly.
“And I 'd like to learn that some one more conversant—more professional in these matters—”