Hotel on the previous
day, and to the exceedingly unsatisfactory nature of the Chairman's
statement. It regretted the absence of Mrs. Alice Challice (her change
of condition had not yet reached the heart of Cohoon's) from the
meeting, and asked her whether she would be prepared to support the
action of a committee which had been formed to eject the existing board
and which had already a following of 385,000 votes. It finished by
asserting that unless the committee was immediately lifted to absolute
power the company would be quite ruined.

Priam re-read the letter aloud.

"What does it all mean?" asked Alice quietly.

"Well," said he, "that's what it means."

"Does it mean--?" she began.

"By Jove!" he exclaimed, "I forgot. I saw something on a placard this
morning about Cohoon's, and I thought it might interest you, so I bought
it." So saying, he drew from his pocket the _Financial Times_, which he
had entirely forgotten. There it was: a column and a quarter of the
Chairman's speech, and nearly two columns of stormy scenes. The Chairman
was the Marquis of Drumgaldy, but his rank had apparently not shielded
him from the violence of expletives such as "Liar!" "Humbug!" and even
"Rogue!" The Marquis had merely stated, with every formula of apology,
that, owing to the extraordinary depreciation in licensed property, the
directors had not felt justified in declaring any dividend at all on the
Ordinary Shares of the company. He had made this quite simple assertion,
and instantly a body of shareholders, less reasonable and more
avaricious even than shareholders usually are, had begun to turn the
historic hall of the Cannon Street Hotel into a bear garden. One might
have imagined that the sole aim of brewery companies was to make money,
and that the patriotism of old-world brewers, that patriotism which
impelled them to supply an honest English beer to the honest English
working-man at a purely nominal price, was scorned and forgotten. One
was, indeed, forced to imagine this. In vain the Marquis pointed out
that the shareholders had received a fifteen per cent, dividend for
years and years past, and that really, for once in a way, they ought to
be prepared to sacrifice a temporary advantage for the sake of future
prosperity. The thought of those regular high dividends gave rise to no
gratitude in shareholding hearts; it seemed merely to render them the
more furious. The baser passions had been let loose in the Cannon Stre