Chester darkened. "So he made the thing pay?"
"Seem to pay. Looking so simple, so ordinary, 'twas but a mask for something else."
"But in a thing looking so ordinary had he no competitors, to make profits difficult?"
"Ah, of a kind, yes; but the men who could do that best would not do it at all. They would not have been respected."
"But T. Chapdelaine & Son were respected."
"Yes, in spite of that. Their friends said: 'Let the extremists be extreme that way.'"
"The public mind was not yet quite in flames."
"No. But--guess who helped grandpère do that."
"Why, do I know him? Castanado."
The girl shook her head.