“There it is, my Lord,” said Cutbill, taking up the colored picture of the pier, with its busy crowds, and its bustling porters. “There it is!”
“I should say, Cutbill, there it is not!” observed the other, bitterly. “Anything more unlike the reality is hard to conceive.”
“Few things are as unlike a cornet in the Life Guards as a child in a perambulator—”
“Very well, all that,” interrupted Lord Culduff, impatiently. “I know that sort of argument perfectly. I have been pestered with the acorn, or, rather, with the unborn forests in the heart of the acorn, for many a day. Let us get a stride in advance of these platitudes. Is the whole thing like this?” and he threw the drawing across the table contemptuously as he spoke. “Is it all of this pattern, eh?”
“In one sense it is very like,” said the other, with a greater amount of decision in his tone than usual.
“In which case, then, the sooner we abandon it the better,” said Lord Culduff, rising, and standing with his back to the fire, his head high, and his look intensely haughty.
“It is not for me to dictate to your Lordship,—I could never presume to do so,—but certainly it is not every one in Great Britain who could reconcile himself to relinquish one of the largest sources of wealth in the kingdom. Taking the lowest estimate of Carrick Nuish mine alone,—and when I say the lowest, I mean throwing the whole thing into a company of shareholders and neither working nor risking a shilling yourself,—you may put from twenty to five-and-twenty thousand pounds into your pocket within a twelvemonth.”
“Who will guarantee that, Cutbill?” said Lord Culduff, with a faint smile.
“I am ready myself to do so, provided my counsels be strictly followed. I will do so, with my whole professional reputation.”
“I am charmed to hear you say so. It is a very gratifying piece of news for me. You feel, therefore, certain that we have struck coal?”