“If we lawyers waited for our clients to tell us all their thoughts, Mr. de Talor, it would often take us a long time to reach the truth. We have to read their faces, or even their backs sometimes. You have no idea of how much expression a back is capable, if you make such things your study; yours, for instance, looks very uncomfortable to-day: nothing gone wrong, I hope?”
“No, Cardus, no,” answered Mr. de Talor, dropping the subject of backs, which was, he felt, beyond him; “that is, nothing much, merely a question of business, on which I have come to ask your advice as a shrewd man.”
“My best advice is at your service, Mr. de Talor: what is it?”
“Well, Cardus, it’s this.” And Mr. de Talor seated his portly frame in an easy-chair, and turned his broad, vulgar face towards the lawyer. “It’s about the railway-grease business—”
“Which you own up in Manchester?”
“Yes, that’s it.”
“Well, then, it ought to be a satisfactory subject to talk of. It pays hand over fist, does it not?”
“No, Cardus, that is just the point: it did pay, it don’t now.”
“How’s that?”
“Well, you see, when my father took out the patent, and started the business, his ’ouse was the only ’ouse in the market, and he made a pot, and, I don’t mind telling you, I’ve made a pot too; but now, what do you think?—there’s a beggarly firm called Rastrick & Codley that took out a new patent last year, and is underselling us with a better stuff at a cheaper price than we can turn it out at.”