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profits in the endowment of churches. That’s a sort of idola-
try. He told me he endowed churches every year, Charley.’
‘No end of them,’ said Mr. Gould, marvelling inwardly at
the mobility of her physiognomy. ‘All over the country. He’s
famous for that sort of munificence.’ ‘Oh, he didn’t boast,’
Mrs. Gould declared, scrupulously. ‘I believe he’s really a
good man, but so stupid! A poor Chulo who offers a little
silver arm or leg to thank his god for a cure is as rational
and more touching.’
‘He’s at the head of immense silver and iron interests,’
Charles Gould observed.
‘Ah, yes! The religion of silver and iron. He’s a very civil
man, though he looked awfully solemn when he first saw
the Madonna on the staircase, who’s only wood and paint;
but he said nothing to me. My dear Charley, I heard those
men talk among themselves. Can it be that they really wish
to become, for an immense consideration, drawers of water
and hewers of wood to all the countries and nations of the
earth?’
‘A man must work to some end,’ Charles Gould said,
vaguely.
Mrs. Gould, frowning, surveyed him from head to foot.
With his riding breeches, leather leggings (an article of ap-
parel never before seen in Costaguana), a Norfolk coat of
grey flannel, and those great flaming moustaches, he sug-
gested an officer of cavalry turned gentleman farmer. This
combination was gratifying to Mrs. Gould’s tastes. ‘How
thin the poor boy is!’ she thought. ‘He overworks himself.’
But there was no denying that his fine-drawn, keen red

Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard