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two; but Macalister was optimistic, the Boers couldn’t hold
out much longer, and he was willing to bet a top-hat that
Roberts would march into Johannesburg before the mid-
dle of April. At the account Philip had to pay out nearly
forty pounds. It worried him considerably, but he felt that
the only course was to hold on: in his circumstances the
loss was too great for him to pocket. For two or three weeks
nothing happened; the Boers would not understand that
they were beaten and nothing remained for them but to
surrender: in fact they had one or two small successes, and
Philip’s shares fell half a crown more. It became evident that
the war was not finished. There was a lot of selling. When
Macalister saw Philip he was pessimistic.
‘I’m not sure if the best thing wouldn’t be to cut the loss.
I’ve been paying out about as much as I want to in differ-
ences.’
Philip was sick with anxiety. He could not sleep at night;
he bolted his breakfast, reduced now to tea and bread and
butter, in order to get over to the club reading-room and
see the paper; sometimes the news was bad, and sometimes
there was no news at all, but when the shares moved it was
to go down. He did not know what to do. If he sold now
he would lose altogether hard on three hundred and fifty
pounds; and that would leave him only eighty pounds to go
on with. He wished with all his heart that he had never been
such a fool as to dabble on the Stock Exchange, but the only
thing was to hold on; something decisive might happen any
day and the shares would go up; he did not hope now for a
profit, but he wanted to make good his loss. It was his only