The Firm of Girdlestone

John and Ezra Girdlestone, father and son, run a British merchant company trading to the African coast with several sailing ships, all dangerously ill-maintained. Their small office is in London, their business is quite personally run, and the firm and its owners are well respected in the City by the 1870s. John Girdlestone is deeply and ostentatiously religious, to the cynical amazement of his so...