"I know nothing about running an hotel," I objected.
"Neither do I--yet," was the sanguine answer, "but we can learn. It's only common sense and hard work. We can hire a good manager and engage a first-class cook."
"How many rooms are there?"
"Only thirteen. It's the bar where we shall make the money."
"The bar----!"
"There are two bars, one on the main street and another on the back. Billy Bingham has made the place too hot to hold him. His licence is to be withdrawn. He's got to get out. We can get his licence transferred to us all right, if we promise to make the place respectable. We'll have good food, a first-rate lunch counter for the business men, we can let the big rooms for club dinners and society banquets, and there's a 100 per cent. profit, you know, on liquor. We'll make the Hub the best 'joint' in the town. All the fellows will come. A year will do it. Then we'll sell out...."
I was not listening. The word "liquor"--I had never touched alcohol in my life--made such a noise in my mind that I could hear nothing else.
"My father," I mentioned in a faint voice, "is a public man at home. He's a great temperance reformer. He speaks and writes against drink. He's brought me up that way. It would be a terrible shock to him if his son made money out of a bar." The hotel scheme, indeed, seemed to me an impossibility. A picture of the Temperance meetings held in our country house flashed through my mind. I glanced down at my coat, on whose lapel, until recently, there had been a little strip of blue ribbon, signifying that I was a member of the Band of Hope which included several million avowed teetotallers. "Don't you see, old chap?" I explained further. "It would simply break his heart, and my mother's too."
"He need never know anything about it," came the
answer at once. "Why should he? Our names needn't
