“Hear me out, Mr Trethick. It seems to me you have come to the worst place in the world.”
“The worst! Why so?”
“Because every one here will look upon your schemes as visionary. If you had a vast capital, and liked to spend it in experiments, well and good. People would laugh at your failures, and applaud your successes—if you made any.”
“If?” said Geoffrey, smiling. “Then, sir, you are not sanguine?”
“Not at all,” said the banker. “You see, Mr Trethick, you will not find any one in this neighbourhood who will let you run risks with his capital and machinery, or tamper with the very inadequate returns that people are now getting from their mines. If you wanted a simple post as manager—”
“That’s what I do want,” said Geoffrey, interrupting. “The other would follow.”
“I say, if you wanted a simple post as manager,” continued the banker, as calmly as if he had not been interrupted, “you would not get it unless you could lay before a company of proprietors ample testimonials showing your experience in mining matters. Believe me, Mr Trethick, you, a gentleman, have come to the wrong place.”
“Let us sink the word gentleman in its ordinary acceptation, Mr Penwynn,” said Geoffrey, warmly. “I hope I shall always be a gentleman, but I come to you, sir, as a working man—one who has to win his income by his brain-directed hands.”
“You should have gone out to some speculative mining place, Mr Trethick,” said the banker, taking one leg across his knee and caressing it. “Nevada or Peru—Australia if you like. You would make a fortune there. Here you will starve.”
“Starve! Not if I have to help the fishermen with their nets, Mr Penwynn. I can row well, sir,” he said, laughing, “and I have muscle enough to let me pull strongly at a rope. Starve? I’ve no fear of that.”