Adventure stories; City and town life -- Fiction; Staffordshire (England) -- Fiction
And he explained what he meant. What would Denry take for the entire
secret and rights of the Chocolate Remedy and the use of the name
"Machin" ("without which none was genuine").
"What do you offer?" Denry asked.
"Well, I ’ll give you a hundred pounds down, and that’s my last word."
Denry was staggered. A hundred pounds for simply nothing at all—for
dipping bits of chocolate in lemon-juice!
He shook his head.
"I ’ll take two hundred," he replied.
And he got two hundred. It was probably the worst bargain that he ever
made in his life. For the Chocolate Remedy continued obstinately in
demand for ten years afterwards. But he was glad to be rid of the
thing; it was spoiling his sleep and wearing him out.
He had other worries. The boatmen of Llandudno regarded him as an enemy
of the human race. If they had not been nature’s gentlemen they would
have burnt him alive at a stake. Cregeen, in particular, consistently
referred to him in terms which could not have been more severe had Denry
been the assassin of Cregeen’s wife and seven children. In daring to
make over a hundred pounds a week out of a ramshackle old lifeboat that
Cregeen had sold to him for thirty-five pounds, Denry was outraging
Cregeen’s moral code. Cregeen had paid thirty-five pounds for the
_Fleetwing_, a craft immeasurably superior to Denry’s nameless tub. And
was Cregeen making a hundred pounds a week out of it? Not a hundred
shillings! Cregeen genuinely thought that he had a right to half
Denry’s profits. Old Simeon, too, seemed to think that _he_ had a right
to a large percentage of the same profits. And the Corporation, though
it was notorious that excursionists visited the town purposely to voyage
in the lifeboat, the Corporation made difficulties—about the embarking
and disembarking, about the photographic strip of beach, about the
crowds on the pavement outside the photograph shop. Denry learnt that
he had committed the sin of not being a native of Llandudno. He was a
stranger, and he was taking money out of the town. At times he wished
he could have been born again. His friend and saviour was the local
secretary of the Lifeboat Institution, who happened to be a town
councillor. This worthy man, to whom Denry paid over about a pound a
day, was invaluable to him. Further, Denry was invited—nay commanded—to
contribute to nearly every church, chapel, mission, and charity in
Carnarvonshire, Flintshire, and other counties. His youthfulness was
not accepted as an excuse. And as his gross profits could be calculated
by any dunce who chose to stand on the beach for half a day, it was not
easy for him to pretend that he was on the brink of starvation. He
could only ward off attacks by stating with vague, convinced sadness
that his expenses were much greater than any one could imagine.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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