But you'll go to-morrow and you'll
keep on going until you find out what is behind those brown-green
goblin spectacles. If only he didn't look so like a gnome!"
The clause conditional, introduced by the word "if," does not
always imply a conclusion, even in the mind of the propounder.
Miss Brewster would have been hard put to it to round out her
subjunctive.
VI
FORKED TONGUES
"Pooh!" said Thatcher Brewster.
Thatcher Brewster's "Pooh!" is generally recognized in the realm
of high finance as carrying weight. It is not derisive or
contemptuous; it is dismissive. The subject of it simply ceases to
exist. In the present instance, it was so mild as scarcely to stir
the smoke from his after-dinner cigar, yet it had all the intent,
if not the effect, of finality. The reason why it hadn't the
effect was that it was directed at Thatcher Brewster's daughter.
"Perhaps not quite so much 'Pooh!' as you think," was that
damsel's reception of the pregnant monosyllable.
"A bug-hunter from nowhere! Don't I know that type?" said the
magnate, who confounded all scientists with inventors, the
capital-seeking inventor being the bane and torment of his life.
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