‘Ought you not to think of your wife? Remember what it will mean to her if you are beaten in the end, when your savings are gone and your business unsaleable.’
For a moment there were signs of wavering in Mr. Quinn’s face. The fingers of his hands twisted in and out of each other, and a pitiable look of great distress came into his eyes. Then he unclasped his hands and placed them flat on the table before him.
‘I shall hold on,’ he said. ‘I shall not close my mill while I have a shilling left to pay my workers with.’
‘Well,’ said Hyacinth, ‘it is for you to decide. At least, you can count on my doing my best, my very best.’
CHAPTER XVIII
Mr. Quinn carried on his struggle for nearly a year, although from the very first he might have recognised its hopelessness. Time after time Hyacinth made his tour, and visited the shopkeepers who had once been his customers. Occasionally he succeeded in obtaining orders, and a faint gleam of hope encouraged him, but he had no steady success. Mr. Quinn’s original estimate of the situation was so far justified that after a while the religious animosity died out. Shopkeepers even explained apologetically that they gave their orders to the Robeen convent for purely commercial reasons.
‘Their goods are cheaper than yours, and that’s the truth, Mr. Conneally.’
Hyacinth recognised that Mr. Quinn was being beaten at his own game. He had attempted to drive the nuns out of the market by underselling them, and now it appeared that they, too, were prepared to face a loss. It was obvious that their losses must be great, much greater than Mr. Quinn’s. Rumours were rife of large loans raised by the Mother Superior, of mortgages on the factory buildings and the machinery. These stories brought very little consolation, for, as Hyacinth knew, Mr. Quinn was very nearly at the end of his resources. He refused to borrow.
‘When I am forced to close up,’ he said, ‘I shall do so with a clear balance-sheet. I have no wish for bankruptcy.’