“There are years of service in these old ovens yet,” he asserted confidently. “Don’t you think so, Mr. Thirlwall? But as to that, we should expect to put them in good repair if any one wished to buy them.”
“Mr. Tregarvon is still in the mind to sell?” queried the round-faced bookkeeper.
“Candidly, Vance doesn’t know his own mind from one day to another,” said Carfax, parrying nimbly. “But I guess we are all that way, more or less; up one day and down the next.”
The tall engineer smiled because it seemed obvious that he was expected to. “You have been having some more bad luck up on the mountain, so Mr. Thaxter tells me,” he put in. “It seems rather a pity that you and your friend won’t take the word of those who know, and stop throwing good money away.”
“It is a pity, isn’t it?” Carfax concurred heartily. “But if we didn’t spend money in this way, heaven only knows in what other foolish enterprise we might be investing.”
“That is a new power-plant you are hauling up the hill?” the engineer inquired.
“Brand-new,” boasted Tregarvon’s proxy.
“The purchase doesn’t look as if you were intending to stop throwing the money away,” said Thirlwall.
“Oh, that is entirely as it may happen,” Carfax countered cheerfully. “You know the bankrupt always puts up the best front he can when he finds himself coming to the jumping-off place.”
“I hope you and Mr. Tregarvon are not trying to run a bluff on anything so unimpressible as Consolidated Coal,” laughed Thaxter.