Why could he not as easily have said four as two to his
mother? The simple answer is that he was afraid to say four. It was as
if he ought to blush before his mother for being so plutocratic, his
mother who had passed most of her life in hard toil to gain a few
shillings a week. Four thousand seemed so fantastic! And in fact the
Thrift Club, which he had invented in a moment, had arrived at a
prodigious success, with its central offices in Hanbridge and its branch
offices in the other four towns, and its scores of clerks and collectors
presided over by Mr Penkethman. It had met with opposition. The mighty
said that Denry was making an unholy fortune under the guise of
philanthropy. And to be on the safe side the Countess of Chell had
resigned her official patronage of the club and given her shares to the
Pirehill Infirmary, which had accepted the high dividends on them
without the least protest. As for Denry, he said that he had never set
out to be a philanthropist nor posed as one, and that his unique
intention was to grow rich by supplying a want, like the rest of them,
and that anyhow there was no compulsion to belong to his Thrift Club.
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