Still, it was a beast of a week! Try as she might, Patricia could not wrest his mind from his business problems to herself. Even during their visits to Francis, he seemed incapable of putting the thing aside. She grew to resent the constant messengers bringing bulky envelopes from Reid, the servants, “Your office wants you on the telephone, sir,” the afternoons he must spend in the City. For Peter had no intention of allowing Maurice to play out time. He hustled Reid till Reid hustled Guthrie; met this point; refused that; threatened here; was purposely dilatory there; used every artifice to bring matters to a climax before the Thursday morning when he must return to France. In the end, by luck rather than judgment, he succeeded. Maurice Beresford (afraid lest Peter should carry out his latest threat—to liquidate Jameson & Co. altogether) suggested a conference. They met, the two accountants and the three principals, at Guthrie’s offices; sat down in his mahogany board-room to a long session. Talk, as usual at such meetings, coiled away from essentials; wound itself into interminable knots over unimportant minutiæ . . . till Peter’s temper, long held in leash, got the better of him. “And don’t you think, Mr. Jameson,” began Guthrie blandly, “that the transfer should be made as from the date of the balance-sheet?” “If you want to know what _I_ think,” Peter flashed back at him, “I think we’re all sitting round this table like a lot of blithering idiots, talking sanguinary rubbish. Anyway, I’m fed up with it. Look here, Maurice”—he turned on the little man furiously—“you’ve been mucking about for six days. I’ve met you over the guaranteeing of the book-debts, the price of the fixtures, and the indemnity for repairs under the lease. What the hell more do you want?” Guthrie, ruffled out of his portly dignity, sat silent and disgruntled; Reid’s eyes twinkled; Charlie Beresford fidgeted uncomfortably; but his brother, screwing monocle into eye-socket, retorted calmly: “I don’t want to pay anything for goodwill.” “Then the deal’s off.” Peter began to gather up the papers in front of him. “If you won’t pay more than the actual value of the assets, I’ll wind up the show myself. . . .” “But . . .” began Maurice. “Though why the devil you’ve wasted all this time, God alone knows,” finished Peter. He completed the collection of papers, rose to go. For once in the history of Beresford & Beresford, the junior partner saved the situation. Maurice, not realizing Peter’s temper unassumed, thinking it a bluff, sat silent; leaving Charlie’s frightened acquisitiveness to exclaim: “I don’t see why we shouldn’t pay _something_ for goodwill. Only, it’s a question of how much. Couldn’t we compromise, Peter?”