United States or Ghana ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It struck me as probable that, in the event of the invention turning out a reality, Cloetedorp A's might become unsaleable within the next few weeks or so. He eyed me sternly. "Wentworth," he said, "you're a fool!" As a director as Chairman would it be just or right of me? I ask you, sir, could I reconcile it to my conscience?" "Charles," I answered, "you are right. Your conduct is noble.
I could see Charles wriggle inside his clothes. He was most uncomfortable. That a man like Cordery should say such things, in so loud a voice, on no matter how little foundation, openly in Piccadilly, was enough in itself to make a sensitive barometer such as Cloetedorp Golcondas go down a point or two. "Hush, hush!"
I don't know whether Charles was most disappointed at missing the chance of so clever a superintendent for the mine at Cloetedorp, or elated at the novel description of himself as "a British nobleman;" which is not precisely our English idea of a colonial knighthood. Three days later, accordingly, the Quackenbosses left the Lakeside Hotel.
I could see at once from his mollified tone that the news from the Transvaal was favourable to his operations in Cloetedorp Golcondas. He was therefore in a friendly and affable temper. His whole manner changed at once. He grew polite in return to the polite stranger.
"Has the right sort of grit in him! Those Americans are the men. Wish I had a round hundred of them on my works in South Africa!" That idea seemed to grow upon him. He was immensely taken with it. He had lately dismissed one of his chief superintendents at the Cloetedorp mine, and he seriously debated whether or not he should offer the post to the smart Kentuckian.
For my own part, I am inclined to connect this fact with his expressed determination to visit his South African undertakings for three months yearly in future; and I am driven to suspect he felt life at Cloetedorp would be rendered much more tolerable by the agreeable society of a quaint and amusing American lady. "If you offer it to him," I said, "remember, you must disclose your personality."
'Pon my soul, I admire him. I sometimes wish " He broke off and hesitated. "Yes, Charles?" I answered. "I sometimes wish ... we had got him on the Board of the Cloetedorp Golcondas. Mag nificent combinations he would make in the City!" I rose from my seat and stared solemnly at my misguided brother-in-law. "Charles," I said, "you are beside yourself.
Before the crash comes I will sell out to-morrow the few shares I hold, through Charles's kindness, in the Cloetedorp Golcondas." With his marvellous business instinct, Charles seemed to divine my thought, for he turned round to me sharply. "Look here, Sey," he remarked, in an acidulous tone, "recollect, you're my brother-in-law. You are also my secretary.
And in effect, when Charles and I took our wonted places in the Pullman next morning, on our way up to the half-yearly meeting of Cloetedorp Golcondas, there was our Doctor, leaning back in his arm-chair as if the car belonged to him. Charles gave me an expressive look. "Does it in style," he whispered, "doesn't he?
Much later, when the Vandrift estate and farm near Kimberley developed by degrees into the Cloetedorp Golcondas, Limited, my brother-in-law offered me the not unremunerative post of secretary; in which capacity I have ever since been his constant and attached companion. He is not a man whom any common sharper can take in, is Charles Vandrift.
Word Of The Day