"How would you like to serve Weston that way?" put in Winn when the story was ended.
"I wouldn't mind," answered Jess, chuckling at the thought, "though I cac'late we've come purty near gettin' square with him. I'd like to see him humsoever, jist about now, 'n' tell him old Rip Van Winkle hez woke up, 'n' if he wants any more quarries I'll 'commodate him if he'll come to Rockhaven."
Then when Page had made up the accounts of all three whose stock he had sold, handing each a check for their dues, all shook hands and separated.
And so warm was Winn's heart toward the old man who had "sorter took to him on sight" that he escorted him to the hotel and remained with him until he left for Rockhaven the next morning.
CHAPTER XXXI
TWO DOGS AND A BONE
When the market closed that afternoon there was a scene in Simmons's office and an exchange of lurid language and mutual recrimination between Weston and himself unfit for publication.
Weston cursed Simmons for an arrant coward and a doddering old idiot, and Simmons abused Weston for a stupid fool who believed his dupe, Hardy, was blindly quarrying granite and selling stock to other dupes, when, instead, he had kept posted, come to the city in the nick of time, and tipped over their stock dish.
"The next time you pose for a great financier," said Simmons, with biting sarcasm, "and try to engineer a corner, you had better place half your stock in the hands of your office boy and tell him to attend the ball games each afternoon. Then advertise what your intentions are in the papers. It would be on a par with what you have done. You may be able to pray with a stupid old woman and hoodwink her, but as for doing business with men, you have mistaken your calling. You can't even deceive boys!"