He paused eloquently and scooped his egg into the glass.
“I infer you have a hen on,” Maisie suggested.
“Perhaps the metaphor would be less mixed if we substituted a goose for the hen. I believe the goose is the fowl currently credited with the ability to lay golden eggs.”
“John Casson!” His wife now spoke for the first time. “Are you mixed in another gamble?”
“Not at all, my dear, not at all. I have invested in several cargoes of Chinese rice at a very low price, and I have sold one cargo at a very high price. I am holding the others for the crest of a market that is rising like a toy balloon. It isn’t gambling, my dear. It’s just a mortal certainty.”
The good lady sighed. How often, in the thirty years of her life with John Casson, had she heard him, in those same buoyant, confident, mellifluous tones, assure her of the infallibility of victory due to his superior judgment!
As usual, Maisie placed her finger on the sore spot. “What does Dan think of it, Uncle John?”
“He doesn’t think anything, my dear. He doesn’t know.”
“Oh, I see! This is a private venture of yours?”
He nodded. “Yes—and no, Maisie. It’s a Casson and Pritchard deal, only I’m engineering it myself. I’m going to prove to that overconfident young man the truth of the old saying ‘Nothing risked, nothing gained.’ Why, the biggest thing in years lay right under his nose—and he passed it by.”