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admired - this was, he proudly informed everyone within earshot, his first day out of skirts. It was David’s chance to move away, although he was held in conversation for a moment or two by William. Such was the shipowner’s indignation with Mr Plimsoll, whose unwarranted interference in the business of shipping had so impertinently been given force by Parliament, that he felt obliged to express it to every new audience.
    David naturally knew a good deal about William Lorimer’s affairs. He knew, for example, that the Lorimer Line was more deeply indebted to the bank than even Mr Crankshaw’s business, and with less security. Besides beingthe son of the chairman of Lorimer’s, and a large shareholder in his own right, William was presumably destined to be chairman himself one day. Sometimes he behaved as though he regarded the bank’s funds as his own, and it was difficult for anyone but his father to oppose him. The purchase of steamships was an expensive business and their running costs were high. David could not help suspecting that, in the rivalry with Liverpool, pride sometimes counted for more than economic considerations.
    Although he knew something of William’s financial affairs, David was less well acquainted with him as a man. John Junius had married late in life, so his elder son was still under thirty. Lacking the authority of his father’s age and position, William made no attempt to emulate his domineering manner. Instead, he had a reputation for being devious, for arranging what he wanted with one person at a time in such a way that each believed he was being asked to accept a plan to which everyone else had already agreed.
    David had heard that Sophie, William’s wife, was a beauty, but at this first meeting he did not feel disposed to agree. Perhaps it was only that her pale face, sleek black hair and languid manner gave a colourless impression when compared with the repressed energy of her smaller sister-in-law. Or perhaps her placidity had been imposed by her present condition. Although the slim lines and fluid fabrics of the latest fashion had not yet spread out from London, even the provinces had some time ago abandoned the crinoline. This season’s slimmer hoops afforded no disguise to the later stages of pregnancy. Sophie held out a limp hand to David as William presented him, but showed no interest in conversation. With the feeling that he was intruding on a family occasion, David withdrew as soon as it was polite to do so.
    For a time he explored the gardens. Eight ladies wereplaying a game of croquet on one lawn, while their husbands drank sherry and seltzerwater and made teasing remarks. There was a good deal of laughter and a certain amount of cheating - David could see more clearly than the players themselves the way in which a long skirt concealed both a ball and the foot which rearranged its position. The tennis lawn, on the other hand, was not in use. Even if the members of the bank staff had known how to play the new game, they were not correctly dressed for it. David stood for a moment at the edge of one of the two terraces above the gorge, leaning back against its stone balustrade and staring at the mansion.
    He was not envious. In his feelings at this moment there was no resentment that the Lorimers should live in such style whilst he must be content with two dark rooms in an insalubrious neighbourhood. The same ambition which prompted him to copy the accents and manners of his betters allowed him to admire their possessions without rancour. One day he intended to be a wealthy man himself. A fortune on the scale of the Lorimers’ was not to be acquired in a single lifetime, but it represented a goal at which to aim. As long as such rewards existed at the top of the ladder, the struggle at the bottom was worth while. Even if David himself should never live in a palace like Brinsley House, it was necessary to his ambitions that homes such as this