ngered on, starving its workmen,
and just keeping alive by making common garden pots and pans and
drain-tiles. Most people who could had sold out of it, thanking the
Limited Liabilities for its doing them no further harm; and the small
remnant only hung on because no one could be found to give them even
the absurdly small amount that was still said to be the value of their
shares.

That they would find now Harold had fallen in with young Yolland, who
had been singing the old song, first of Prometesky, then of Crabbe, and
had made him listen to it. Five pounds would now buy a share that used
to be worth a hundred, and that with thanks from the seller that he got
anything from what had long ceased to pay the ghost of a dividend. And
loose cash was not scarce with Harold; he was able to buy up an amount
which perfectly terrified me, and made me augur that the Hydriot would
swallow all Boola Boola, and more too; and as to Mr. Yolland's promises
of improvements, no one, after past experience, could believe in them.

"Now, Harold, you know nothing of all this intricate business; and as
to these chemical agencies, I am sure you know nothing about them."

"I shall learn."

"You will only be taken in," I went on in my character as good aunt,
"and utterly ruined."

"No matter if I am."

"Only please, at least, don't drag in Eustace and Arghouse."

"Eustace will only have five shares standing in his name to enable him
to be chairman."

"Five too many! Harold! I cannot see why you involve yourself in all
this. You are well off! You don't care for these foolish hopes of
gain."

"I can't see things go so stupidly to wrack."

The truth was that he saw in it a continuation of Prometesky's work and
his father's, so expostulations were vain. He had been thoroughly
bitten, and was the more excited at finding that Dermot and Viola Tracy
were both shareholders. Their father had been a believer in Crabbe,
and had taken a good many shares, and these had been divided between
them at his death. They could not be sold till they were of age, and
by the time Dermot was twenty-one, no one would buy them; and now, when
they were recalled to his mind, he would gladly have made Harold a
present of them, but Harold would not even buy them; he declared that
he wanted Dermot's vote, as a shareholder, to help in the majority;
and, in fact, the effective male shareholders on the spot were only
just sufficient to furnish directors. M