“Well, dominie!”
David put his hand on the back of one of the chairs near the little stove that heated the office.
“Can you sit down for a minute or two!” he asked. “Have you time to talk facts and figures; to give me a business man's good advice!”
“Why, yes,” said Hardcome; “I guess you ain't going to try to sell me any stocks and bonds, eh! I guess you're one man I don't have to be afraid of that with. Facts and figures, eh! Fire away!”
David seated himself and put one knee over the other. The warmth of the stove was grateful after the chill air outside, and he rubbed his palms back and forth against each other.
“Do you know—or, if you don't know exactly, can you guess fairly dose to it—what the campaign we had last month cost our crowd!” David asked.
“County or city!” asked Hardcome. “I guess there wasn't much spent outside the city.”
“I was thinking of the city,” said David.
“Well, we raised pretty close to four thousand dollars,” said Hardcome, “and we spent more than that. We spent more than four thousand dollars. Halls, fireworks, speakers, printing—costs a lot of money! I guess the other fellows spent three times that, so we can't complain. I hear the liquor makers poured a lot of money into Riverbank, and I guess it's so. Wouldn't surprise me at all if they spent ten or twelve thousand.”
“To our four thousand,” said David. “Looking at it that way you couldn't call our money wasted, could you!”