Even the invalids
smiled wanly.
Kenyon reclined in his deck-chair with his eyes fixed on the blue sky.
His mind was at rest about the syndicate report now that it had been
mailed to London. His thoughts wandered to his own affairs, and he
wondered whether he would make money out of the option he had acquired at
Ottawa. He was not an optimistic man, and he doubted.
After their work for the London Syndicate was finished, the young men had
done a little business on their own account. They visited together a
mica-mine that was barely paying expenses, and which the proprietors were
anxious to sell. The mine was owned by the Austrian Mining Company,
whose agent, Von Brent, was interviewed by Kenyon in Ottawa. The young
men obtained an option on this mine for three months from Von Brent.
Kenyon's educated eye had told him that the white mineral they were
placing on the dump at the mouth of the mine was even more valuable than
the mica for which they were mining.
Kenyon was scrupulously honest--a quality somewhat at a discount in the
mining business--and it seemed to him hardly the fair thing that he
should take advantage of the ignorance of Von Brent regarding the mineral
on the dump. Wentworth had some trouble in overcoming his friend's
scruples. He claimed that knowledge always had to be paid for, in law,
medicine, or mineralogy, and therefore that they were perfectly justified
in profiting by their superior wisdom. So it came about that the young
men took to England with them a three months' option on the mine.
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