’Beaple Yeo, the chief promoter and secretary, and treasurer _pro tem_. The speculation was certain to bring in twenty-five per cent., and he gave his personal security for seventeen.’
’And have you much capital in this concern?’
’Well—yes. The decimals grow thicker on this part of the coast than anywhere else in the world, and the decimals have an extraordinary healing effect in disease. They are cast up on the shore, and exhale a peculiar odour which is very stimulating. I have smelt the decimals myself—no, what am I saying, it is iodine, not decimals, but on my soul, I don’t know exactly what the decimals are, but this I can tell you, they have run away with some good money of mine.’
’How dense you are, Philip! For the sake of the iodine, we were going to build a city at or near Bridlington, to which all the sick people in Europe who could afford it, would troop. There was a crescent to be called after Lamb.’
’Well, has the land been bought on which to build and open the quarries?’
’No; that is the misfortune. Mr. Yeo has been unable to induce the landowners to sell, and so he has absconded with the money subscribed.’
’And is there no property on which to fall back?’
Philip smiled. Now he understood what Mrs. Cusworth had done with her two hundred and fifty pounds. She also had been induced to invest in iodine or decimals.
’What is to be done?’ repeated Philip. ’Bear your loss.’
Philip insisted on Mrs. Sidebottom seating herself, and giving him as connected and plain an account of the loss she had met with, as it was in her power to give. But to give a connected and plain account of anything affecting the interests deeply is not more easy for some persons than it is for a tipsy man to walk straight. They gesticulate in their narration, lurch and turn about in a whimsical manner. But Philip had been in a solicitor’s office, and knew how to deal with narrators of their troubles. Whenever Mrs. Sidebottom swayed from the direct path, he pulled her back into it; when she attempted to turn round, or retrace her steps, he took her by the shoulders—metaphorically, of course—and set her face in the direction he intended her to go. Mr. Smithies was a man in whom Mrs. Sidebottom professed confidence, and whom she employed professionally to watch and worry her nephew; to examine the accounts of the business, so as to ensure her getting from it her share to the last farthing.