Great Britain -- Politics and government -- 20th century -- Fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Politicians -- Fiction
It speedily appeared that Gilly Foot had other than pecuniary reasons
for wanting a partner; he wanted a pair of hands to work for him. He was
lazy, at times even lethargic; nothing could make him hurry. He hated
details, and, above all other details, figures. His work was to hatch
ideas; somebody else had to bring up the chickens. Andy could hardly
have allowed the cool shuffling-off of all the practical business work
on to his shoulders--which was what happened as soon as he had learnt
even the rudiments of it--had it not been that the ideas were good. The
indolent young man would sit all the morning--not that his morning began
very early--apparently doing nothing, then spend two hours at lunch at
the restaurant, come back smoking a large cigar, and after another
hour's rumination be delivered of an idea. The budding business--Andy
wondered how it had even budded under a gardener who no doubt planted
but never watered--lay mainly with educational works; and here Gilly's
ingenuity came in. He was marvellously good at guessing what would
appeal to a schoolmaster; how or whence he got this instinct it was
impossible to say; it seemed just a freak of genius. The prospectus of a
new "series," or the "syllabus" of a new course of study (contained in
Messrs. Gilbert Foot and Co.'s primers) became in his hands a most
skilful bait. And if he hooked one schoolmaster, as he pointed out to
Andy, it was equivalent to hooking scores, perhaps hundreds, conceivably
thousands, of boys. Girls too perhaps! Gilly was all for the higher
education of girls. Generations of the youth of both sexes rose before
his prophetically sanguine eye, all brought up on Gilbert Foot and Co.'s
primers.
"A single really good idea for a series may mean a small fortune, Andy,"
he would say impressively. "And now I think I may as well go to lunch."
Andy accepted the situation and did the hard work. He also provided his
partner with a note-book, urging him to put down (or, failing that, to
get somebody else to put down) any brilliant idea which occurred to him
at lunch. For himself he made a rule--lunch at the restaurant not more
than once a week. Only ideas justified lunch there every day. Lunch
there might be good for ideas; it was not good for figures.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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