Then Mr. Raidsford thought he must return home.
“Good-night,” said Mr. Stewart; “though your views differ from mine, I do not say but there is much truth in them. That is the worst of our imperfect state of existence, there is truth in everything.”
“Even in a promoter,” suggested Douglas Croft; and then the three shook hands with Mr. Raidsford, who drove back to Moorlands thinking to himself—
“These great people are very curious individuals. If three men in my own rank of life had come together under such circumstances, there would have been hard words used, and a quarrel to a certainty. Is it that they are not in earnest, or is it civilization? One hears a great deal about civilization; is this one of its fruits?” and thus pondering, Mr. Raidsford returned home to the wife of his bosom, who, back from Hastings, was conducting her household on principles which seemed to the servants the reverse either of Christian or civilized.
Perhaps this fact made the amicable warfare at Kemms Park seem all the more astonishing to the contractor, who had many things still to learn, though he was so clever about business and business matters.
“If that be the way gentlemen quarrel,” he thought, “I cannot wonder at their looking down on us; I wonder now what they are thinking about me?”
Had a little bird of the air carried what the trio were saying about him to Mr. Raidsford, he need not have covered his face and shut his eyes.
“Spite of his crotchets I really like Raidsford,” remarked Mr. Croft. “What do you suppose he meant, uncle, when he spoke about the Company failing?”
“He meant,” answered Mr. Stewart, “what I have often suspected myself,—that Black is too great a rogue to be honest, even if honesty be to his interest. Raidsford is a well-intentioned fellow, but he has not much information outside his business. Still, his ideas are worth consideration, and I shall consider them, and look up Mr. Crossenham,” added Mr. Stewart in a lower tone, as he went downstairs to the dining-room, where a substantial supper was already spread.