“Isn’t she getting wholesale rates anyhow?”
“No. They won’t make no difference fur a little six weeks’ order for one person. I’m gettin’ food and camp outfit fur twenty-eight people fur two years. They make a reduction fur that.”
It seemed reasonable; and really, these simple people were disposed to be very serviceable.
She thought of Trenn’s brotherly letter of good-by and his handsome contribution of $300, reposing at that instant in the yellow bag that hung at her belt. Well, suppose she used “the money for Hildegarde” in a double sense. Suppose she got some stock in Hildegarde’s name. It was all my eye about Blumpitty’s wanting to help “that kind of young lady” just because she—fudge! Mrs. Mar was “from Missouri!” But it very probably would help the girl with her new friends that they should look upon her as financially interested in their enterprise—should think of her obliged and grateful family as a probable source of further revenue. Odd if it were Mrs. Mar after all who should be the cause of the Mar family’s profiting by the gold discovery at Nome. But she would do nothing upon impulse.
“I think I could send you two or three hundred before you sail,” she said.
Mr. Blumpitty looked on the floor, and made no manner of response.
“How would that do?” and she repeated the offer.
“I can’t promise they’ll be any o’ the margin left by the time we sail.”
“Why can’t you?”
“Wa-al, I got to keep fifty-one per cent. fur myself.”