Sam took it nicely. “I’d rather,” he said, “that he were still alive;” and, at the moment, he meant it.
But he had been right. It was the finger of fate.
CHAPTER XI—UNDER WAY
AS a simple matter of course, Lance offered Sam the first refusal of his father’s business, but was not surprised when Sam declined to think of it.
Sam was far more surprised at himself than Lance at Sam. Lance had never looked upon estate agency as a desirable profession, whereas Sam had been bored with its routine without losing his respect for its utility, and only yesterday he would have jumped at the chance of owning the business. He heard with astonishment the sound of his own voice politely refusing the offer, but having refused he did not tamper with his swift decision.
The fact is, one supposes, that what might be called the quick-firing part of his intelligence had absorbed and reacted to the fact of his thousand pounds before the whole of him was properly aware of it. At any rate, he refused, and, on reflection, approved his refusal.
His speculation in Gerald Adams wore a different aspect now that he was a capitalist. “Money,” as he had remembered once before, “breeds money,” and he doubted if Travers’ business, robbed of Travers’ genial personality, were fecund enough for the pace of money-breeding he anticipated. Perhaps, too, there was something in the thought that the Travers’ agency was dead man’s shoes, while, win or lose, the idea of publishing Adams’ lecture was his own invention.
Another thing that happened to him with his legacy was the feeling that he had regained caste; he belonged again with his old school-fellows. “How many of them,” he thought, “can lay hands at a moment’s notice on a thousand pounds?” and walked erectly through the street where, naturally, since he had not met him in eight years until last night, he encountered Stewart.