Neville tells the story of his brother Victor, who spent two years walking past their father's rented shop building in Barbados, imagining its sign reading 'J. N. Goddard and Sons' in place of the actual tenant's name. When the building unexpectedly came up for sale, a man who admired the family's honesty but was not a close friend financed the purchase through his own lawyers (to avoid driving the price up), and the Goddards bought the building for $50,000 in 1924 on borrowed money, despite having no savings or collateral of their own.