And the things the
Hardingham gave out, I repeat, were nothing to the things that came
in. I think of the long procession of people who sat down before us and
propounded this and that. Now it was a device for selling bread under
a fancy name and so escaping the laws as to weight--this was afterwards
floated as the Decorticated Health-Bread Company and bumped against the
law--now it was a new scheme for still more strident advertisement,
now it was a story of unsuspected deposits of minerals, now a cheap and
nasty substitute for this or that common necessity, now the treachery of
a too well-informed employee, anxious to become our partner. It was
all put to us tentatively, persuasively. Sometimes one had a large pink
blusterous person trying to carry us off our feet by his pseudo-boyish
frankness, now some dyspeptically yellow whisperer, now some earnest,
specially dressed youth with an eye-glass and a buttonhole, now some
homely-speaking, shrewd Manchester man or some Scotchman eager to be
very clear and full.
Many came in couples or trios, often in tow of an explanatory solicitor.
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