“Very well, sir. If that is what you wish, you shall have it at once.”
Then with a punctilious little bow, he turned and left the office.
CHAPTER IX.
THE MAINSPRING OF ENDEAVOR.
One morning, some two years after Mr. Leffingwell Hope was thus summarily dismissed from the Wentworth company, Mr. James Rand, assistant general manager of the Wentworth Optical Glass Company, was seated in the private office of Robert G. Wentworth, president of the parent organization.
They had been two eventful years to Jimmy. For five months after his momentous second interview with the president, the technical men of the company had worked on the plan, making endless experiments. Then there was the investigation of Mrs. Rand’s property. Additional borings were made. The coal measures were estimated as to quantity and extent, and the sand was similarly valued.
With Jimmy’s mother the company dealt in a strictly businesslike manner. Her property was purchased. She received an adequate amount in cash, and a substantial block of stock in the new company.
Then the legal department of the company took the matter up, and innumerable applications for patents covering the special apparatus that had been devised were made.
Then the board of directors of the Wentworth company met, and plans for the organizing and financing of a new company were outlined.
Jimmy had not realized there were so many technical, legal, and financial things in the world to do, let alone apply them all just to one project—and especially to his project.
Jimmy, of course, had taken no active part in all this; but Mr. Wentworth seemed desirous of having him in touch with it all, and he was present at most of the conferences.