“Yais. Didn’t you know?”
“The V-C phosphate works?”
“Why, yais. Haven’t you been to see them yet? He ought to, oughtn’t he, David? ‘Specially now they’ve found those deposits up the river were just as rich as they hoped, after all.”
“Whose? Mr. Mayrant’s?” I asked with such sharpness that the bride was surprised.
David hadn’t attended to the name. It was some trust estate, he thought; Regent Tom, or some such thing.
“And they thought it was no good,” said the bride. “And it’s aivry bit as good as the Coosaw used to be. Better than Florida or Tennessee.”
My eyes instinctively turned to where they had last seen the launch; of course it wasn’t there any more. Then I spoke to David.
“Do you know what a phosphate bed looks like? Can one see it?”
“This kind you can,” he answered. “But it’s not worth your trouble. Just a kind of a square hole you dig along the river till you strike the stuff. What you want to see is the works.”
No, I didn’t want to see even the works; they smelt atrociously, and I do not care for vats, and acids, and processes: and besides, had I not seen enough? My eyes went down the river again where that launch had gone; and I wondered if the wedding-cake would be postponed any more.