"Father, I wish you had gone yourself, I told you——"
"Yes, I know, you told me I know, you did—told me you weren’t no good at bargaining, and I’m afraid you were right! Here you go and—and—and——" Sir Josiah paused, a little breathlessly.
"Well, what’s the place like? Just try my lad and pull yourself together and describe it!"
"Homewood—it bears the same name as we do, father!"
Sir Josiah sat down, he sat down abruptly and stared wide eyed at his son.
"Homewood——" he gasped, "Little Stretton—Homewood Manor—well, well if this don’t beat anything—anything I’ve ever heard—Homewood——"
"Odd coincidence, it’s more—it’s more. It is the very hand of Fate, that’s what it is, the hand of Fate, you don’t understand of course you don’t——" he paused. "Allan, did you ever hear the name Pringle?"
"Pringle?" asked Allan, puzzled, "of course I have heard it, but——"
"Heard it, just heard it—eh? That’s all, just heard it, mentioned and nothing more, eh?"
"It’s a name I have heard, father, that’s all!"
"And don’t signify anything to you, nothing particular, out of the way, eh?"
"Bless me, bless me, you never heard me speak of Allan Pringle of The Green Gate Inn in Aldgate?"
"A wonderful man!" said Sir Josiah. "Allan, his name was, the same as yours and Allan was his father before him and his father before him, yes Allans all along the line, till they came to me, only me they called Josiah, Josiah after Josiah Rodwell, my mother’s father, hoping to get a bit out of the old man, which they never did, bless me! and never heard of Allan Pringle, you haven’t?
"Queer too," Josiah rambled on, "that he should be the kind of man he was, they said of him as he could squeeze gold out of a stone and I b’lieve he could. Coming from the country, a farm hand he was and his father a gardener and his father’s father a gardener, grubbing about in the earth, Allan, and yet Allan Pringle came to London, a farmer’s boy and makes a little fortune!"
"My grandfather, Allan Pringle was. He laid the foundation of our fortune! My father was keen and clever, not up to the old man though. Still he did not do so badly, he left me forty thousand when he died, that’s what I’ve been building on, Allan, and now—now—maybe it’s nearer twenty times forty thousand, my boy! That comes of having a head on you—a head which you haven’t got and never will have!"