“I’ve done my best,” said Mr Shanklin, laughing.
“I shall be glad of a holiday. It’s as hard work sponging one fool as it is fleecing a couple of hundred sheep, eh?”
“Well, the wool came off very easily, I must say. I reckon there’ll be a clean £500 to divide on the Liverpool business alone.”
“Nice occupation that’ll be on the Boulogne steamer to-morrow,” said Mr Shanklin. “Dear me, I hope it won’t be rough, I’m such a bad sailor!”
“Then, of course,” said Mr Medlock, “there’ll be your little takings to add to that. Your working expenses can’t have been much.”
Mr Shanklin laughed again.
“No. I’ve done without circulars and a salaried secretary. By the way, do you fancy any one smells anything wrong up in the North yet?”
“Bless you, no. The fellow’s pretty near starving, and yet he sent me up a stray £2 he received the other day. It’s as good as a play to read the letters he sends me up about getting the orders executed in strict rotation, as entered in a beautiful register he kept, and which I borrowed, my boy. Ha! ha! He wants me to run down to Liverpool, he says, as he’s not quite satisfied with his position there. Ho! ho! And he’d like a little money on account, as he’s had to buy stamps and coals and all that sort of thing out of his own thirteen shillings a week. It’s enough to make one die of laughing, isn’t it?”
“It is funny,” said Mr Shanklin. “But you’re quite right to be on the safe side and start to-morrow. You did everything in his name, I suppose—took the office, ordered the printing, and all that sort of thing?”
“Oh yes, I took care of that. My name or yours was never mentioned, except mine on the dummy list of directors. That won’t hurt.”