"If you want plain facts, aunt, I don't see why anyone should give sixpence for it, and if we tried to wind it up, it would mean bankruptcy. Some of the money's a very long way out."
"Your poor Uncle Godfrey intended to leave you comfortably off, I know."
"And I'm pleased to think he died believing he had done so. They had the quaintest way of keeping books down at Water Street. Cutting notches on a tally-stick was nothing to some of their dodges. They hadn't struck a proper balance sheet for years, and both Uncle Godfrey and Mr. Crewdson really and honestly imagined that the firm was flourishing."
"Not I, aunt. Uncle Godfrey left me the concern believing it to be a small fortune for me, and a fortune I'm going to make out of it, and not a small one, either."
"I don't believe in business women," said Mrs. Craven severely. "I'd rather see a womanly woman."
"My dear," said Kate, "you shall see the two combined in me presently. I'm going to make a ve-ry large and extensive fortune; but the moment you see anything unfeminine about me, I want you to tell me, and I'll sell out forthwith."
Thereafter from eight o'clock A.M. to six-thirty P.M. for five days a week Kate sat in an inner room of the Water Street office, with the ancient Crewdson as a buffer between her and the world. She came into the place with a talent for figures, and a good general idea of the business, and she set herself first to the conversion of Mr. Crewdson.
That worthy old person was entirely of opinion that what was good enough for poor Mr. Godfrey was quite good enough for anybody else, and (when pressed) said so with unfriendly plainness. A man, in Kate's shoes, would have dismissed him, and brought in younger blood. Kate preferred conversion. She knew that there was a great quarry of information on matters West African stowed beneath Mr. Crewdson's dull exterior, and she intended to dig at it. So she reduced his wages, which he quite agreed with her the firm could not afford, and then, unasked, offered him a fine commission on the next year's profits. It was curious to see how soon she galvanized him into an opinion that these profits must certainly be forthcoming.
She laid in a typewriter, burned the office quills, wrote the firm's letters, signed them _For O'Neill and Craven, K. O'Neill_, and before she knew it had created a personality. Ten callers a day--captains, pursers, traders, merchants--wanted to shake hands with "your new head, Mr. K.," and went away with the idea that old Crewdson had suddenly developed capacity, and on the strength of it had stood himself a new signature.