This
purchase is for your good. 'There is a tide in the affairs of men'--and
I for one am not content, never have been, to stagnate. If that is what
you want, however, by all means give your support to these gentlemen and
have done with it. I tell you freights will go up before the end of
the year; the purchase is a sound one, more than a sound one--I, at any
rate, stand or fall by it. Refuse to ratify it, if you like; if you do,
I shall resign."
He sank back into his seat. The secretary, stealing a glance, thought
with a sort of enthusiasm: 'Bravo! Who'd have thought he could rally
his voice like that? A good touch, too, that about his honour! I believe
he's knocked them.
It's still dicky, though, if that fellow at the back gets up again;
the old chap can't work that stop a second time. 'Ah! here was 'old
Apple-pie' on his hind legs. That was all right!
"I do not hesitate to say that I am an old friend of the chairman; we
are, many of us, old friends of the chairman, and it has been painful to
me, and I doubt not to others, to hear an attack made on him. If he is
old in body, he is young in mental vigour and courage. I wish we were
all as young.
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