and his scented handkerchief behind a fern-pot en route.

"But he looks all right, and acts all right, and talks all right --
and shouts all right," protested Steelman. "He's not stumped,
for I saw twenty or thirty sovereigns when he shouted;
and he doesn't seem to care a damn whether we stand in with him or not."

"There you are! That's just where it is!" said Smith, with some logic,
but in a tone a wife uses in argument (which tone, by the way,
especially if backed by logic or common sense, makes a man wild
sooner than anything else in this world of troubles).

Steelman jerked his chair half-round in disgust. "That's you!" he snorted,
"always suspicious! Always suspicious of everybody and everything!
If I found myself shot into a world where I couldn't trust anybody
I'd shoot myself out of it. Life would be worse than not worth living.
Smith, you'll never make money, except by hard graft -- hard, bullocking,
nigger-driving graft like we had on that damned railway section
for the last six months, up to our knees in water all winter,
and all for a paltry cheque of one-fifty -- twenty of that gone already.
How do you expect to make money in this country if you won't
take anything for granted, except hard cash? I tell you, Smith,
there's a thousand pounds lost for every one gained or saved
by trusting too little. How did Vanderbilt and ----"

Steelman elaborated to a climax, slipping a glance warily, once or twice,
out of the tail of his eye through the ferns, low down.

"There never was a fortune made that wasn't made by chancing it."