just like his impudence, but
Sir Joseph stood there looking at him and smiling on the side of his
face that Keith couldn't see, and he told the little chap to "work
hard and mind his rough breathings." Isaac had supposed that was some
sort of a joke, for Keith, he tried hard to grin, though his face went
red hot all over. Then Sir Joseph had turned round very serious and
asked if he, Rickman, had any other sons, because, whatever he did
with the rest of them, he must make this one a scholar. Isaac had said
No, he hadn't any but that one boy, and he would have to be brought up
to the business. He was afraid he couldn't spare the time to make much
of a scholar of him. Time, said Isaac, was money. What Sir Joseph said
then Isaac had never forgotten. He had said; "True, time was money,
loose cash in your pockets; but brains were capital." And there wasn't
a better investment for them, he had added, than a good sound
classical education. Isaac was to send the boy to the City of London,
then to the London University, if he couldn't rise to Oxford; but Sir
Joseph's advice was Oxford. Let him try for a scholarship. He added
that he would like to do something for him later on if he lived. Isaac
had never forgotten it; his memory being assisted by the circumstance
that Sir Joseph had that very same day bought one hundred and
twenty-five pounds' worth of books for his great library down in
Devonshire.

The boy was sent to an "Academy," then to the City of London; Isaac
had not risen to Oxford. Keith never tried for a scholarship, and if
he had, Isaac would have drawn the line at a university education, as
tending towards an unholy leisure and the wisdom of this world.
Otherwise he had spared no expense, for he had grasped the fact that
this was an investment, and he looked to have his money back again
with something like fifty per cent. interest. And the boy, the boy was
to come back, too, with a brain as bright as steel, all its queer
little complicated parts in working order; in short, a superb machine;
and Isaac would only have to touch a spring to set it going.

But the question was, what spring? And that, unfortunately, was what
old Rickman never could lay his finger on.

Still it went, that machine of his, apparently of its own accord. It
went mysteriously, capriciously, but fairly satisfactorily on the
whole. And Isaac was wise; his very respect for the thing that had
cost him so much prevented him from tampering with i