“I’m not goin’ broke on it. Why, Sam, ten years from now——”
“You told papa all about that,” Sam interrupted hurriedly. “You talked fine about it, and I wish I could run off an argument half as good. It’s a shame when a man’s got a line o’ talk like that he ain’t got a good proposition behind it.”
“But it is good. Why, even two years from now——”
“Yes; by then it might be,” Sam said. “But now you got an awful hard gang to get any backin’ out of in the business men of our city, Dan. They didn’t make their money so easy they’re willin’ to take a chance once in a while, you see.”
“I expect so,” Dan sighed; and then, consulting his memorandum book, shook hands with this sympathetic friend and hurried away to see if he could obtain another interview with John W. Johns, the president of the Chamber of Commerce. He was successful to just that extent; he was readily granted the hearing, but failed to arouse a more serious interest in Ornaby Addition than had hitherto been shown by this too-humorous official.
Mr. Johns was cordial, told Dan that he did “just actually love to listen about Ornaby Addition”; that he was always delighted to listen when he had the time, and went on to mention that he had said openly to the whole Chamber at the Chamber’s Friday lunch, “Why, to hear young Dan Oliphant take on about Ornaby Addition, it’s as good as a variety show any day!” Mr. Johns was by no means unfriendly; on the contrary, he ended by becoming complimentary on the subject of Dan’s good nature. “Of course, you aren’t goin’ to get any business man to sink a dollar in that old farm, my boy; but I do like the way you stand up to the roastin’ you get about it. ’Tisn’t every young fellow your age could take everybody’s whoopin’ and hollerin’ about him without gettin’ pretty hot under the collar.”
“Oh, no,” Dan said. “If I can get some of you to put in a little money, I don’t care how you laugh.”
“But you can’t,” Mr. Johns pointed out. “That’s why I kind o’ like the way you take it. We don’t put in a cent, and we get hunderds of dollars’ worth o’ fun out of it!”
“I guess that’s so,” Dan admitted, and he went away somewhat crestfallen in spite of Mr. Johns’s compliment.
As Sam Kohn said, these men of business had not made their money easily; they had made it by persistent caution and shrewdness, by patient saving, and by self-denial in the days of their youth; they were not the men to “take a chance once in a while.” Orations delighted them but would never convince them; and as the weeks and months went by, Dan began to understand that if Ornaby Addition was to be saved, he alone would have to save it.