Reggie was young-looking, clean-shaved, with a twinkle in his eye, and a head
that nothing short of a gallon of the Gunners' Madeira could make any
impression on.
One day, at a big dinner, he announced casually that the Directors had shifted
on to him a Natural Curiosity, from England, in the Accountant line. He was
perfectly correct. Mr. Silas Riley, Accountant, was a MOST curious animal--a
long, gawky, rawboned Yorkshireman, full of the savage self-conceit that
blossoms only in the best county in England. Arrogance was a mild word for the
mental attitude of Mr. S. Riley. He had worked himself up, after seven years,
to a Cashier's position in a Huddersfield Bank; and all his experience lay
among the factories of the North. Perhaps he would have done better on the
Bombay side, where they are happy with one-half per cent. profits, and money
is cheap. He was useless for Upper India and a wheat Province, where a man
wants a large head and a touch of imagination if he is to turn out a
satisfactory balance-sheet.
He was wonderfully narrow-minded in business, and, being new to the country,
had no notion that Indian banking is totally distinct from Home work. Like
most clever self-made men, he had much simplicity in his nature; and, somehow
or other, had construed the ordinarily polite terms of his letter of
engagement into a belief that the Directors had chosen him on account of his
special and brilliant talents, and that they set great store by him.
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