“Michael, then. Not for ten million. And I need ten million right now.”
“And I suppose,” retorted Selina, spiritedly, “that when your son-in-law Michael Arnold is your age he’ll be telling Eugene how he roughed it in an office over at the yards in the old days. These will be the old days.”
August Hempel laughed good humouredly. “That can be, Selina. That can be.” He chewed his cigar and settled to the business at hand.
“You want to drain and tile. Plant high-grade stuff. You got to have a man on the place that knows what’s what, not this Rip Van Winkle we saw in the cabbage field. New horses. A wagon.” His eyes narrowed speculatively. Shrewd wrinkles radiated from their corners. “I betcha we’ll see the day when you truck farmers will run into town with your stuff in big automobile wagons that will get you there in under an hour. It’s bound to come. The horse is doomed, that’s chust what.” Then, abruptly, “I will get you the horses, a bargain, at the yards.” He took out a long flat check book. He began writing in it with a pen that he took from his pocket—some sort of marvellous pen that seemed already filled with ink and that you unscrewed at the top and then screwed at the bottom. He squinted through his cigar smoke, the check book propped on his knee. He tore off the check with a clean rip. “For a starter,” he said. He held it out to Selina.
“There now!” exclaimed Julie, in triumphant satisfaction. That was more like it. Doing something.
But Selina did not take the check. She sat very still in her chair, her hands folded. “That isn’t the regular way,” she said.
August Hempel was screwing the top on his fountain pen again. “Regular way? for what?”
“I’m borrowing this money, not taking it. Oh, yes, I am! I couldn’t get along without it. I realize that now, after yesterday. Yesterday! But in five years—seven—I’ll pay it back.” Then, at a half-uttered protest from Julie, “That’s the only way I’ll take it. It’s for Dirk. But I’m going to earn it—and pay it back. I want a——” she was being enormously businesslike, and unconsciously enjoying it——“a—an I. O. U. A promise to pay you back just as—as soon as I can. That’s business, isn’t it? And I’ll sign it.”
“Sure,” said Aug Hempel, and unscrewed his fountain pen again. “Sure that’s business.” Very serious, he scribbled again, busily, on a piece of paper. A year later, when Selina had learned many things, among them that simple and compound interest on money loaned are not mere problems devised to fill Duffy’s Arithmetic in her school-teaching days, she went to August Hempel between laughter and tears.
“You didn’t say one word about interest, that day. Not a word. What a little fool you must have thought me.”