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Half an hour after I had stepped from the train, I was back again in my cosy little flat in Rivermead Mansions, after a very strenuous day. On the hall table lay a letter from my solicitors. I tore it open eagerly and read that they regretted to inform me that certain investments I had made a year before, with the money which my aunt had left me, had not realized my expectations.
Now listen: You remember, don't you, that in the first year or two following after the time your mother left us, the estate was sort of snarled up? Well, it was worse snarled up than you two children had any idea of. Two or three of the heaviest investments your father made in the later years of his life weren't turnin' out very well.
"I'm afraid you don't come in," Wrayson answered; "but remember I am only following out a surmise. Have you looked through your brother's papers carefully?" "I've gone through 'em all," Mr. Sydney Barnes answered, "but, of course, I was looking for scrip or a memorandum of investments, or something of that sort.
I used to have a drawer in my desk I called my "fool drawer." I kept my investments in it. I mean, the investments I did not have to lock up. You get the pathos of that the investments nobody wanted to steal. And whenever I would get unduly inflated I would open that drawer and "view the remains." I had in that drawer the deed to my Oklahoma corner-lots. Those lots were going to double next week.
"Let us hope for the best, Father," answered the son, as bravely as he could. Then he questioned his father about the investments in the Sunset Irrigation Company and in the lands out west, and soon the pair were going over the matters carefully. "I think we need the services of a first-class lawyer one we can trust absolutely," said Dick. "But where can you find such a lawyer?" asked the father.
I shall only stop now to say that interest on investments was a species of tax in perpetuity upon the product of those engaged in industry which a person possessing or inheriting money was able to levy. It must not be supposed that an arrangement which seems so unnatural and preposterous according to modern notions was never criticized by your ancestors.
Credit was reduced to reckon to a nicety the amount she could rely on positively: her fixed income from her investments and the letting of The Crossways: the days of half-yearly payments that would magnify her to some proportions beside the alarming growth of her partner, who was proud of it, and referred her to the treasures she could summon with her pen, at a murmur of dissatisfaction.
He demanded and obtained for his subjects a pledge that they should be paid at par for the bonds they now hold, while the subjects of the King of Saxony receive only their present value. The king promised, however, that the Prussians should make no further investments in these bonds. You see, then, that it is impossible for me to fulfil this commission."
The bankers represented to her tactfully that neither she nor Mr. Davis had yet had extensive experience in the investment of money; that the operations of the Clark's Field Associates were not finally wound up; that they had had such success in their investments on her account that it would be well to allow them to carry out their scheme of investment, etc.
"These be some of my investments," he answered, with just a tinge of surliness. "I cal'late they'll stand inspection. I ain't forcing you to take the money, sir," he flared up, all at once. "I'd like to save the business." Mr. Carvel was disarmed. He went unsteadily to his desk, and none save God knew the shock that his pride received that day.
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