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Oppenheim, E. Phillips (Edward Phillips), 1866-1946

"A Millionaire of Yesterday"

I am enjoying it. It
is something like life I can tell you, and aren't I lucky? Trent
made me take Cathcart's place. I am getting 800 pounds a year, and
only fancy it, he says he'll see that the directors make me a
special grant. Everything looks very different here now, and I do
hope the Company will be a success. There's whole heaps of mining
machinery landed and waiting for the road to be finished to go up,
and people seem to be streaming into the place. I wonder what
Cathcart will say when he knows that the road is as good as done,
and that I've got his job!
"Chap called for mail. Goodbye.
"Ever your affectionate
"FRED.
"Trent is a brick."
Ernestine read the letter slowly, line by line, word by word. To
tell the truth it was absorbingly interesting to her. Already
there had come rumours of the daring and blunt, resistless force
with which this new-made millionaire had confronted a gigantic task.
His terse communications had found their way into the Press, and in
them and in the boy's letter she seemed to discover something
Caesaric. That night it was more than usually difficult for her to
settle down to her own work. She read her nephew's letter more than
once and continually she found her thoughts slipping away - traveling
across the ocean to a tropical strip of country, where a
heterogeneous crowd of men were toiling and digging under a blazing
sun.


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