None the less, he abandoned the idea of sending out for wine, and contented himself with the resources of the cabinet instead. After some friendly pressure, Semple consented to join him in a brandy-and-soda, though he continued to protest between sips that at such an hour it was an indecent practice.
“It's the ruin of many a strong man,” he moralized, looking rather pointedly at Thorpe over his glass. “It's the principal danger that besets the verra successful man. He's too busily occupied to take exercise, and he's too anxious and worried to get his proper sleep—but he can always drink! In one sense, I'm not sorry to think that you're leaving the City.”
“Oh, it never hurts me,” Thorpe said, indifferently accepting the direction of the homily. “I'm as strong as an ox. But all the same, I shall be better in every way for getting out of this hole. Thank God, I can get off to Scotland tomorrow. But I say, Semple, what's the matter with your visiting me at my place there? I'll give you the greatest shooting and fishing you ever heard of.”
The Broker was thinking of something else. “What is to be the precise position of the Company, in the immediate future?” he asked.
“Company? What Company?”
Semple smiled grimly. “Have you already forgotten that there is such a thing?” he queried, with irony. “Why, man, this Company that paid for this verra fine Board-table,” he explained, with his knuckles on its red baize centre.
Thorpe laughed amusedly. “I paid for that out of my own pocket,” he said. “For that matter everything about the Company has come out of my pocket——”
“Or gone into it,” suggested the other, and they chuckled together.
“But no—you're right,” Thorpe declared. “Some thing ought to be settled about the Company, I suppose. Of course I wash my hands of it—but would anybody else want to go on with it? You see its annual working expenses, merely for the office and the Board, foot up nearly 3,000 pounds. I've paid these for this year, but naturally I won't do it again. And would it be worth anybody else's while to do it? Yours, for example?”
“Have you had any explanations with the other Directors?” the Broker asked, thoughtfully.