"Marvellous!" echoed Mr. Robinson again.
"But if I may make the remark in my turn," said Wyndham, "your sympathy with labour surprises me equally."
"Why so?" asked Mr. Robinson.
"The natural antagonism between capital and labour!" smiled Wyndham.
"Oh, I started as a poor boy—right at the foot of the ladder," explained Mr. Robinson. "My father was a carpenter. Wages were low in those days, and prices of all necessaries were high. I remember in my childhood we had a pretty hard time of it. In my own firm we share the profits with all the employees. So you see I'm rather partial to labour so long as it's decent and reasonable. When I think of my own struggles, I like to see every man get fair opportunities. When a man has no particular talent—such as myself, for instance—it is ever so much the harder to go through discouragements. But, at the worst of times, it must be a great thing for a gifted man like yourself to be conscious of his own powers."
"So you set up to have no particular talent!" explained Wyndham. "You amuse me. Haven't you made your fortune unaided? I confess that that seems to me the most difficult thing in the world—immensely cleverer than anything in the way of art or painting."
Mr. Robinson laughed. "Now you're making fun of me."
"I was never more serious in my life," insisted Wyndham, now wheeling forward a smaller easel, in order to display the pictures he had at first selected. "I consider it frightfully clever to make money."
"My dear sir, fools often make money," Mr. Robinson assured him.
Wyndham shook his head incredulously. "Do you care much about this landscape?" he asked.