“What do you know about its being a fine profession?”
“Because it gives men all sorts of power, sir.”
“Power be damned, boy. Power to stink of paraffin whenever they go out to dinner; though that must be seldom, even now, I’m glad to think.”
“Sir James Russel was a fine man, sir; and so was William Horrocks, who made the Gartishan Dam.”
“Sir James Russel may have been God Almighty, for all I know or care; I never heard of him; but William Horrocks I do know, or at least know of, for his uncle was old John Horrocks, the mealman down at Kill Hill, and a dirtier, old, snuffy scoundrel I never saw out of an almshouse.”
“I don’t know what his uncle was, sir.”
“No, boy, but if you will let me say so, the point is, that I do.”
“Yes, sir, but I am talking of William Horrocks.”
“I think I understand as much. I am merely pointing out to you, in the teeth of a great deal of interruption, that your hero was a man whom no one here would touch with a barge-pole or have inside his house.”
“Sir, a man ought not to be judged by what his uncle is, but by what he is in himself.”