Bye-bye."
"It's gone to his head a little bit--only natural," Horace
reflected as he went down the stairs. "He's probably just
feeding on what folks think of it. As if it mattered a
pin's head what Octavius Milburn thinks or don't think!"
Lorne, however, left alone with his customs returns and
his immigration reports, sat still, attaching a weight
quite out of comparison with a pin's head to Mr Milburn's
opinion. He turned it over and over, instead of the
tabulated figures that were his business: he had to show
himself his way to the conclusion that such a thing could
not matter seriously in the end, since Milburn hadn't a
dollar involved--it would be different if he were a
shareholder in the Maple Line. He wished heartily,
nevertheless, that he could demonstrate a special advantage
to boiler-makers in competitive freights with New York.
What did they import, confound them! Pig-iron? Plates
and rivets? Fortunately he was in a position to get at
the facts, and he got at them with an interest of even
greater intensity than he had shown to the whole question
since ten that morning. Even now, the unprejudiced
observer, turning up the literature connected with the
Cruickshank deputation, may notice a stress laid upon
the advantages to Canadian importers of ore in certain
stages of manufacture which may strike him as slightly,
very slightly, special.
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