Messrs. Cleaver had intimated that the London solicitors were ready to hand over the money, and Mavis was talking to her husband about its investment. "I trust your judgment, Will--and I'd like it put in both our names." "Oh, no, I couldn't quite consent to that." "I do wish you would. If it's invested well, I make out it ought to bring us a hundred a year." "Mavis," he said, thoughtfully, "it might be invested to bring more than that, if you were prepared to take a certain amount of risk." "Oh, I don't want any risk." "An' p'raps the risk, after all, would be covered by the security I'd offer you. That'd be for your lawyers to decide; it's not for me to urge the safety." "Will, what is it?" "I hesitate for this purpose. I want to lead you up to it, so that you shouldn't turn against the proposal without yourself or your representatives giving it consideration." "Will, I wish you'd tell me--I can't bear suspense." "Then here's the first question. If satisfied of the security, would you lend out the money on mortgage with a person who has the chance of setting up himself in an old-established business?" "What business?" "I'll tell you in a minute. Take the person first. You haven't asked about _him_. In a sense, his character--honesty and straight ways--is a part of the security. He is somebody you've known for a many years." "Who is it?" "Myself." "Will? What on earth do you mean?" "Mavis, it's like this--There, bide a bit." They had been sitting in the dusk after their high tea; and now Mary brought a lighted lamp into the room, and put it on the table between them. "All right, my girl. Never mind clearing away till I call for you." He waited until Mary had gone out of the room, and then went on talking. His face with the lamp-light full upon it looked very firm and serious, and his manner while he explained all these new ideas was strangely unemotional. He spoke not in the style of a husband to a wife, but of a business man proposing a partnership to another man. "It seems to me, viewing it all round, a wonderful good chance. An opening that isn't likely to come in one's way twice. Mr. Bates' son has bin and got himself into such a mess over a horse-racing transaction that he's had to make a bolt of it. I can't tell you the facts, because I don't rightly know them; but it's bad--something to do with checks that'll put him to hidin' for a long day, if he doesn't want to answer for it in a court o' law. Well, then, the old gentleman being worn out with private care, wishful to retire, and seeing a common cheat and waster in the one who ought by nature to succeed him, has offered me to take over the farm, the trade, an' the whole bag of tricks." "But, surely to goodness, Will, you don't think of giving up the post office?" "Yes, I do. I think of that, in any case." "But you love the work." "Used to, Mavis." "Don't you now?"