George A. Birmingham

“ I have the utmost confidence in Crossan’s integrity. If a body of “Papishes” of the bloodiest kind were to come upon Crossan and capture him; if they were to condemn him to death and, being God-fearing men, were to allow him half an hour in which to make his soul; he would spend the time, not in saying his prayers, not even in cursing the Pope, but in balancing the accounts of the co-operative store, so that any auditor who took over the books afterwards might find everything in order. ”

“ I met Crossan in the street. He was standing beside his motor car, a handsome-looking vehicle. He evidently intended to go for a drive. I felt at once that I could not ask him a direct question about the packing-cases. I determined to get at them obliquely if I could. I began by admiring the motor.
“She’s good enough, my lord,” said Crossan.
He is a man of few words, and is sparing of his praise. “Good enough” is, from Crossan, quite an enthusiastic compliment.
“If your lordship would care about a drive any day,” he said, “it’ll be a pleasure to me.” ”

“ He’s going about all over the country day after day. He’s got a motor car.”
I can quite understand that Crossan’s owning a motor car must have a very irritating effect on Godfrey. I cannot afford to keep one. That any one else in the district over which I ought, according to Godfrey’s theory, to be a kind of king, should assume a grandeur impossible for me is simply an aggravated kind of insolence. No wonder that Godfrey, with the honour of the family at heart, resented Crossan’s motor car. ”