You are wrong.
It was amassed in the canned-fruit trade, which, I understand,
does not fluctuate severely, though doubtless in the last instance
dependent on the crops. Seely-Hardwicke and his wife were ready to
lose any amount of it at cards, which accounts for a measure of their
success. It had been found (with Mrs. Seely-Hardwicke) somewhere
on the Pacific Slope, by a destitute Yorkshireman who had tired of
driving rivets on the Clyde and betaken himself across the Atlantic,
for a change, in front of a furnace some thirty-odd feet below decks.
Of his adventures in the Great Republic nothing is known but this,
that he drove into the silence of its central plain at the tail of a
traction engine and emerged on its western shore, three years later,
with a wife, a child and a growing pile. With this pile there grew
a desire to spend it in his own country; and the family landed at
Liverpool on Billy's sixth birthday. I think their double-barrelled
name must have been invented by Mrs. Seely-Hardwicke on the voyage.
I first made Billy's acquaintance in the Row, where a capable groom
was teaching him to ride a very small skewbald pony.
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