Page:Robert Barr - Lord Stranleigh Philanthropist.djvu/25

 tell you that during your cure you must not worry about temporal matters. Such advice is quite futile, because his patient is as unable to help worrying about things which may go wrong in his absence as he is to cure himself by an effort of will. Now, I can do for you what the doctor can't. I can control your affairs under a guarantee, my guarantee being that if money is lost in any transaction carried out on your behalf, I will make good the deficiency. If money is gained, it goes into your treasury. So, then, cast away all thought of business, knowing that if you were in the most superb health you could not accomplish more than I shall by giving you such a security."

"Oh," said Mackeller, "I could not think of accepting so one-sided an arrangement as that! It is 'Heads I win, and tails you lose.'"

"Precisely; but the agreement lasts only for a short period, six weeks at the most. Whatever losses I incur during that forty-two days will not matter a button to me, while it is imperative that the primary condition of your cure shall be achieved. I defy even a pessimistic growler like you to worry when you have accepted so advantageous a bargain. Now, we will regard that as settled, and I refuse to discuss it any more."