This had occurred when George was twenty-five.
Matters fell out rather as George had predicted. The youth almost at
once obtained a commission for three hundred pounds' worth of symbolic
statues for the front of the central offices of the Order of Rechabites,
which particularly pleased his uncle, because Samuel Peel was a strong
temperance man. And George got one or two other commissions.
Being extravagant was to George Peel the same thing as "putting all the
profits into the business" is to a manufacturer. He was extravagant and
ostentatious on principle, and by far-sighted policy--or, at least, he
thought that he was.
And thus the world's rumours multiplied his success, and many persons
said and believed that he was making quite two thousand a year, and
would be an A.R.A. before he was grey-haired. But George always related
the true facts to his uncle-in-law; he even made them out to be much
less satisfactory than they really were. His favourite phrase in letters
to his uncle was that he was "building," "building"--not houses, but his
future reputation and success.
Then commissions fell off or grew intermittent, or were refused as being
unworthy of George's dignity.
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