“Yes, yes, but I am not so ardent a lover as to be blind to the faults of my mistress. But about this stay of proceedings. I must sound Wimpenny. I’m afraid he’ll be for his pound of flesh and all the other blood he can squeeze out of you. He’s very sore about that interim injunction and the judge’s remarks at the time would scarcely be as balm of Gilead to him.”
“I suppose Mr. Wimpenny will take his orders from his client.”
“Oh! of course. Well, we shall see what we shall see. That’s oracular, if it doesn’t convey much information. What about your scheme of Co-operative production on advanced lines? Is that to die an untimely death? It seemed to me a most promising essay in social economics. So long as you were content to work like a slave and be a poor man, with no prospect of being anything but a poor man, the system seemed flawless.”
“Systems for the regulation of human affairs will never be flawless, Mr. Sykes, till the men and women who are the flesh and blood of all systems are also flawless. Now I am far from being that.”
“I presume not,” said the lawyer, with something like a sigh. “I suppose you’ve got tired of this sacrificial altar and have secured a lucrative berth, and, like all the others, are going to worship the golden calf. Sic transit gloria mundi. I shed a tear to the memory of Co-op Mill and all the high resolves it enshrines. Who shall write its cold ‘Hic jacet.’”
“Nay, Mr. Sykes, I am not a Latin scholar; but if you will change your goose quill for the graver’s chisel, you shall inscribe on the corner stone of Co-op Mill a proud, a defiant Resurgam.”
“What! You intend to try again?”
“Certainly, I am already looking for premises below Mr. Tinker’s Mill. Unless the Holme takes to flowing uphill, I shall be safe from my present adversary, at all events.”
Mr. Sykes rose and grasped his client’s hand warmly. “That is good hearing, Mr. Pinder; you are a man. Ah! I don’t wonder at Miss —”; but here the man of law checked himself.
“Confound it. The murther was nearly out,” he muttered.