"I shall get it, fast enough. I shall get it, for this reason: if Boult doesn't give it me I shall leave him. Boult can't afford to lose me. I don't want to boast, but it's true. He can't afford to lose me, and he knows it. Do you know," and he lifted his head, speaking more naturally and looking at her with pride in his achievement, "in the two years I have been in the concern I have _doubled_ the takings in my department?" "Really? How very clever of you, Mr. Gibbon! You _must_ be pleased!" He looked at her, and laughed hopelessly. "You don't understand these things, Miss Deleah. You don't realise that what I have done means much." "Oh, but I do, Mr. Gibbon! I have always thought that you must be a quite wonderful business man; so quiet, so regular, thinking of nothing but your work." "I do think of other things," he said fervidly. "I want to get on. I want to improve myself, and my position. There's an end I'm working for. If a man sets an end before him, and works for all he's worth to get it, does he get it, Miss Deleah?" "He gets it. Never doubt it!" "Well then, see! When I get my share of the business I shall work the whole show up as I have worked my own department. The other establishments in the same line can put their shutters up. It's the biggest drapery business in the town now--Boult is proud enough to ram that fact down your throat--but I shall make it the biggest drapery business in the Eastern Counties." "How splendid of you, Mr. Gibbon! And supposing Mr. Boult won't give you the share?" "I am not sure it would not be better. In that case I shall start on my own. Not in a shop. I shall open a warehouse for the sale of my goods, alone." "Those calicoes, and prints, and 'drabbets,' you go to Manchester to buy?" put in Deleah, anxious to show that she understood. "Manchester goods. I shall carry with me all the little customers who come to me now to take my advice what they shall buy, and a lot of shopkeepers of a better class, who will deal with a wholesale mean but will not buy their goods of Boult." "Poor Mr. Boult!" "He must look after hisself. I heard Miss Bessie say the other day that the wholesale line was genteeler than retail--." He broke off and looked questioningly at Deleah, who had formed no opinion on the subject. "Bessie knows about these things," she assured him. "Then, you will become a very rich man, Mr. Gibbon. And will go away, and never help us to make mincemeat any more, or to clear the table after Sunday tea. You will drive your carriage with a _pair_ of horses--not one miserable screw like Mr. Boult--and you will live in a fine house, and grow roses, and build conservatories; won't you?" "Yes," he assented solemnly. Then he unfolded his arms and' stretching them sideways gripped with each hand the ledge of the dresser against which he leant. "I shall want you to come with me," he said.