His reasoning, as always, was simple and to the point.

“The Bank was my father’s show,” he said.  “He made it, and left it to me to carry on.  And I shall—­to the best of my ability.”

With that capacity for dogged grind which distinguished him, he tried to render himself efficient, working early and late like any clerk.

It was a well-nigh hopeless task.  Jim Silver’s head was sound if slow; but he had no aptitude for figures.

“I’m worth two pound a week in the open market,” he told his old house-master.  “And I’m supposed to be bossing—­that.”  And he brandished the latest report of the Bank of which he was nominal chairman.

Notwithstanding obvious differences in many ways, Jim inherited some of his father’s characteristics.

Brazil Silver, in spite of his success, had always remained in his personal life the simple farmer’s son.  Indeed, it was said in the City that he never owned a dress-suit, and that when he had to attend City banquets he hired his butler’s.

When he died he left behind him none of the usual encumbrances.  Original in his private life as in finance, he had steadfastly refused to go the way of the world.  He had never bought a great place in the country or a big house in town.  He had never taken a Scotch moor or a river in Norway.  In London he had a plain but perfectly appointed flat; and sometimes in the summer he took a house on the river or at St. Helen’s.

In these respects Jim followed faithfully in the steps of his father.

He kept on the flat in town, worked in the City all the day, and spent much time of evenings at the Eton Mission in Hackney Wick.

One small extravagance he attempted:  he tried to buy from old Sir Evelyn the farm on which his fathers had lived and died for generations.

The old gentleman, who would sooner have parted from his soul than from an acre of his inheritance, refused to sell.

“I suppose the boy’ll cut up rough now,” grumbled the old baronet, who was fond of Jim.

“Oh, no, he won’t, grandfather,” replied his grandson.  “He’s awfully decent.”

“We shall see,” mumbled the old man; but he had shortly to admit that Billy was right.

Jim Silver, thwarted in his desire to acquire his grandfather’s farm, rented a little hunting-box near by instead.  There he kept his weight-carriers, and there during the hunting season he spent his week-ends and occasional holidays.

Since the days when he walked his grand-dad’s farm as a child, his ambitions had changed in degree but not in kind.  Then he had proposed to devote his life to breeding shire-horses.  Now he meant, when once he had mastered his job, to devote his leisure to owning and breeding ’chasers.

Some time elapsed after his father’s death before he let himself go in this respect.  His sensitive conscience and high sense of duty gave him an uneasy mind in the matter.  His father had disapproved of horses, or rather had been afraid of the Turf and its consequences.