Page 121 (1/2)

On Friday they resumed their conversation, and Mr de Vinne arrived

with a plan It was a good plan He was treht of it, and demanded applause and approval with every second

breath, which was unlike hiood, bad, and indifferent, and,

reviewing the enterprises hich his nahtest difficulty, placed his finger upon the least

profitable and certainly the most hopeless proposition in the Mazeppa

Trading Co could be better for Mr de Vinne's

purpose, not, as he explained to Fred Pole, if he had searched the

Stock Exchange Year Book fro Co stores had dotted the African hinterland thickly

It had exported vast quantities of Manchester goods and Bire unlimited quantities of rubber and

ivory But those were in the bad old days, before authority cainal natives the exact value of a sixpenny

looking-glass

No longer was it possible to barter twenty pounds' worth of ivory for

threepennyworth of beads, and the flourishing Mazeppa Trading Corown i, and had co opulent villas at Wimbledon, whilst the new men who had been

sent to take their places had been so inexperienced that profits fell

to nothing That, in brief, was the history of the Mazeppa Trading

Coed by