Besides, he would recover
it in time. His opinion of himself as a man of perspicacity in
business had recovered from harder blows than this. There was that
affair of the South American mines, for instance,--but anybody may
be mistaken about South American mines. He had told Aunt Caroline
this. "It was," he told Aunt Caroline, "a financial accident. I do
not blame myself. My father, as you know, was a far-sighted man.
These aptitudes run in families." Aunt Caroline had said, "Humph!"
Nevertheless it was true that the elder Hamilton Spence, now
deceased, had been a far-sighted man. Benis had always cherished a
warm admiration for the commercial astuteness which he conceived
himself to have inherited. He would have been, he thought, exactly
like his father--if he had cared for the drudgery of business. So it
was a habit of his, when in a quandary, to consider what his parent
would have done and then to do likewise--an excellent rule if he had
ever succeeded in applying it properly. But there were always so
many intruding details. Take the present predicament, for instance.
He could scarcely picture his father in these precise circumstances.
To do so would be to presuppose actions on the part of that astute
ancestor quite out of keeping with his known character. Would
Hamilton Spence, senior, have crossed a continent at the word of one
of whom he knew nothing, save that he wrote an agreeable letter?
Would he have engaged (and paid for in advance) board and lodging at
a place wholly supposititious? Would he have neglected to ask for
references? Hamilton Spence, junior, was forced to admit that he
would not.
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