XVIII
TWO AMATEURS
Colonel Halket pursued his habitual policy of reticence. Any one who intimated to him disapproval of his plans was excluded from further confidences on the subject. Since the night of his dinner party, when he had found Floyd unsympathetic, he had never discussed with him the scheme of the great combination, and Floyd for his part had evinced no curiosity. It seemed to him that if his grandfather cared to volunteer nothing, his own most effective protest must be by the indifference of silence. The old man was, however, waiting for his grandson to make advances and grew vexed when they did not come. To have the most important designs of his life ignored in this manner, treated day after day as if they were visionary notions which after a first enthusiasm had been abandoned, exasperated Colonel Halket and set him more obstinately than ever to the task of carrying them out. Floyd was not kept in ignorance of their development; Mr. Dunbar and Mr. Ackerman and others of the manufacturers who were included in the arrangement consulted him casually from time to time, taking his interest for granted.
At the proper season Colonel Halket resorted to his customary channels—the local newspapers. On each of them he conferred a carefully written statement: "It is now said, on the highest authority, that the mammoth combination of iron and steel mills to which reference has previously been made in these columns will comprise among others the works of Halket & Co., Dunbar & Co., Ackerman & Jones,—etc. This vast corporation will
