“May I hope to hear from you today?”
“Scarcely. The market’s a bit off—somewhat sluggish. Trading has been pretty rapid of late, and the opinion prevails in some quarters that the market has about reached the point of saturation.”
“Many traders unloading?”
“Oh, no! Everybody is still holding on for a further rise in price, which I personally believe will come. We’re all optimists in the rice market.”
“Well, I’m a pessimist, but only because I do not care for rice. I have never dealt in it before and I don’t know anything about the rice market. Frankly, I’m closing out some trades of Mr. Casson’s under his protest. My instructions to you are practically to throw Casson’s trades overboard in order to get us out of the rice market.”
The broker eyed him keenly. “No necessity for getting stampeded and breaking the market,” he suggested.
The remainder of that day Dan devoted to Tamea’s business. First he went to the Appraisers’ Building and declared the pearls which Gaston had smuggled in on the Moorea. Having paid the duty on them, he called on the leading jewelers and had them appraised again, after which he added ten per cent to the appraisal value and sold the entire lot to a wholesale jeweler for cash. He reasoned, very wisely, that at the height of a period of such prosperity as the country had not hitherto known, the selected pearls of Gaston of the Beard would never bring a better price. He then deposited all of her funds to the credit of “Daniel Pritchard, guardian of Tamea Oluolu Larrieau, a minor,” in a number of savings banks. He next called upon his attorney, who drew up, at his request a formal petition to the Superior Court for letters of guardianship for Tamea.
Yes, Dan was a practical business man, a slave to the accepted forms. He was taking his office as Tamea’s guardian so very seriously that his position was analogous to that of the man who failed to see the woods because of the trees. It did not occur to him that the administration of an estate for a minor who knew nothing of the value of money and cared less, who had never known discipline and who yielded instantly to every elemental human desire and instinct, might be provocative of much distress and loss of sleep to him. On the contrary, what he did do was to return to his office hugely satisfied with the world as at that moment constituted.
CHAPTER XI
At four o’clock Dan telephoned his home and ascertained from Sooey Wan that Tamea and Maisie had gone out together.