"The idea of exploiting it is the idea
of Mr. Bomford. . . . My young friend Burton, you, at least, must
rejoice with us to-night. You must rejoice, in your heart, that our
wise counsels have prevailed. You must feel that you have done a great
and a good action in sharing this inheritance of yours with millions of
your fellow-creatures."
Burton leaned a little forward in his place.
"Professor," he said, "remember that there are only two small beans,
each less than the size of a sixpence, which I have handed over to you.
As to the qualities which they possess, there is no shadow of doubt
about them for I myself am a proof. Yet you take one's breath away with
your schemes. How could you, out of two beans, provide a food for
millions?"
The professor smiled.
"Science will do it, my dear Mr. Burton," he replied, with some note of
patronage in his tone, "science, the highways of which to you are an
untrodden road. I myself am a chemist. I myself, before I felt the
call of Assyria, have made discoveries not wholly unimportant. This
afternoon I spent four hours in my laboratory with one of your beans. I
tell you frankly that I have discovered constituents in that small
article which absolutely stupefy me, qualities which no substance on
earth that I know of, in the vegetable or mineral world, possesses.
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