“Well, why not leave the details to our accountants? You want to sell. We’re quite prepared to buy. A few hundreds one way or another can’t make any difference to either of us. Don’t you think that’s best, Charlie?”
Charlie looked up from his desk; began, “Well, I think we ought to know how much money is involved”; caught his brother’s eye; ended up, “Yes. I think that would be the best way.”
“There’s only one thing,” said Peter at parting, “I think you ought to keep on our old Staff, at any rate until they can find other jobs.”
“My dear Peter,” purred Maurice, “we’re so short-handed that they’ll be a god-send.”
But when Peter broke the news to Miss Macpherson, she said, very firmly: “Oh, I don’t think I’d like to work for Beresford & Beresford, Mr. Jameson. I’d rather go into one of the Government Offices. You see, to have carried on while you were away would have been a kind of war-work, wouldn’t it? Whereas if I went to them. . . .”
She left the sentence unfinished, and its hearer a little amazed. For Government Offices did not pay the same wages as private employers; and patriotism in money-matters—except his own, about which he always felt a trifle foolish—was a little beyond the scope of P.J.’s imagination. . . .
§ 3
The Beresfords lost no time in getting to grips, no opportunity of pointing out the worthlessness of the concern they proposed acquiring.
At his very first interview with George Reid, their intermediary—the dignified portly principal of Messrs. Guthrie, Guthrie, Jellybrand, Sons and Guthrie—made their attitude very clear. He was given to understand, he said, that Jameson & Co. had been for many years prominently associated with a German firm, domiciled in Cuba, who had recently been black-listed by the British Government for serious misdemeanours. Under the circumstances, and as patriotic merchants, his clients felt some diffidence in negotiating.
When Reid (primed by Peter who had anticipated the argument) pointed out that Beresfords had also, prior to the war, traded with Beckmanns, and that they had only abandoned trading with them because his clients, Messrs. Jameson & Co., refused to supply further shipments, Mr. Guthrie professed bland ignorance.