ouraged. He was, in fact, an accidental
channel through which money flowed, employing labour. What was there
objectionable in that? In his charge money was in quicker and more
useful flux than it would be in charge of the State and a lot of
slow-fly money-sucking officials. And as to what he saved each year--it
was just as much in flux as what he didn't save, going into Water Board
or Council Stocks, or something sound and useful. The State paid him no
salary for being trustee of his own or other people's money he did
all that for nothing. Therein lay the whole case against
nationalisation--owners of private property were unpaid, and yet had
every incentive to quicken up the flux. Under nationalisation--just the
opposite! In a country smarting from officialism he felt that he had a
strong case.

It particularly annoyed him, entering that backwater of perfect peace,
to think that a lot of unscrupulous Trusts and Combinations had been
cornering the market in goods of all kinds, and keeping prices at an
artificial height. Such abusers of the individualistic system were the
ruffians who caused all the trouble, and it was some satisfaction to see
them getting into a stew at fast lest the whole thing might come down
with a run--and land them in the soup.

The offices of Cuthcott, Kingson and Forsyte occupied the ground and
first floors of a house on the right-hand side; and, ascending to his
room, Soames thought: 'Time we had a coat of paint.'

His old clerk Gradman was seated, where he always was, at a huge bureau
with countless pigeonholes. Half-the-clerk stood beside him, with a
broker's note recording investment of the proceeds from sale of the
Bryanston Square house, in Roger Forsyte's estate. Soames took it, and
said:

"Vancouver City Stock. H'm. It's down today!"

With a sort of grating ingratiation old Gradman answered him:

"Ye-es; but everything's down, Mr. Soames." And half-the-clerk withdrew.

Soames skewered the document on to a number of other papers and hung up
his hat.

"I want to look at my Will and Marriage Settlement, Gradman."

Old Gradman, moving to the limit of his swivel chair, drew out two
drafts from the bottom lefthand drawer. Recovering his body, he raised
his grizzle-haired face, very red from stooping.

"Copies, Sir."

Soames took them. It struck him suddenly how like Gradman was to the
stout brindled yard dog they had been wont to keep on his chain at
The Shelter, till one day Fleur