Leigh made a gesture of gracious deprecation with his left hand and bowed. "This, Mr. Timmons, is a matter of business, and I never allow anything so odious as fiction to touch even the robe of sacred business." He lifted his hat, raised his eyes to the top of the spire of the church and then bowed low his uncovered head. "For, Mr. Timmons, business is the deity every one of our fellow-countrymen worship." "What are you going to do; that's what I want to know?" said the other fiercely. "Precisely. Well, sir, I shall tell you my position in two words. I suspect my Birmingham correspondent." Leigh threw back his head and smiled engagingly, as though he had ended an amusing anecdote. "By ----, you don't say that?" cried Timmons, fairly startled and drawing back a pace. "I do." "What does he know?" "About what, my dear sir? What does he know about what? Are you curious to learn his educational equipments? Surely you cannot be curious on such a point?" He looked troubled because of Timmons's idle curiosity. "Don't let us have any more rot. You say you suspect this man?" "I do." "What does he know of the stuff?" "Of the stuff, as you call it, he knows from me absolutely nothing." "How can you suspect him if he doesn't know? How can he peach if you haven't let him into the secret?" "I didn't say I suspected him of betraying the secret of my manufacture." "Then what _do_ you suspect him of--speak plain?" Timmons's voice and manner were heavy with threat. "Of something much worse than treachery." "There is nothing worse than treachery in our business." "I suspect this man of something that is worse than treachery in any business." "It has no name?" "It has a name. I suspect this man of not having much money." "Ah!" "Is not that bad? Is not that worse than treachery?" Timmons did not heed these questions. They were too abstract for his mind. "And you think this villain might cheat, might swindle us after all our trouble?" "I think this villain capable of trying to get the best of us, in the way of not paying promptly or the full price agreed upon, or perhaps not being able to pay at all." "And, Mr. Leigh, when did you begin to suspect this unprincipled scoundrel?" Timmons's language was losing the horrible element of slang as the virtuous side of his nature began to assert itself. "Only to-day; only since I saw you in Tunbridge Street." "Mr. Leigh, I hope, sir, you'll forgive my hot words of a while ago. I know I have a bad temper. I humbly ask your pardon, Mr. Leigh." Timmons was quite humble now. "Certainly, freely. We are to work, as you suggested, on the co-operative principle. If through my haste or inefficiency the money had been lost, we should all be the poorer."