“Oh yes. We’ve given him sufficient interest in the business to keep him straight. We shall take stock twice a year, so he could only swindle us for six months in any case. It will pay him better to be honest. Oh yes! he has plenty of good reasons for playing fair with me. I’ve done business with him since he was a nipper with bare legs doing conjuring tricks on the foot-walks of Port Said.”
“You think he is grateful?”
“No, I don’t. He’s a low-class Jew. But he’ll not run any rigs with me for the present.”
I dropped the subject, which was one I did not care to dwell on in any case.
We had come to a general agreement as to the terms on which I was to become a partner, and my lawyer came down to take my instructions and prepare the necessary deed.
Marshall was a personal friend of mine and I never transacted any business except through him, with the exception of the matters that were naturally in the hands of my agents in Ireland.
He had, I knew, a considerable affection for me, and respected my literary work as beseeming a man in my position. But he detested my pigeons, and always disapproved of any suggestions of mine concerning my own property. He had always disapproved too of Edmund, whom he had never met.
“Put him on an allowance and stick to it,” he always said.
It was in vain that I explained that Edmund refused an allowance. This only made Marshall snort.
I dreaded intensely telling him of my present proposals.