Joslin looked at the puffy face of the man who spoke, his heavy cheeks, his thickening neck, his watery eyes, somewhat reddened about the rims. He replied slowly.
“Yes, Mr. Haddon, I reckon I do understand,” said he.
“Well, well, then, what about it? Do you find New York such a poor place to live in? Isn’t there anything here to light you up a little bit more than anything you ever saw down in the Cumberlands?”
Joslin looked at him, his pale face going still paler. “I’ve seen things here I didn’t know was in all the world. But ye wasn’t asking me to sell out my own people, was ye?”
“There you go again!” retorted the irritated man across the table from him. “Rot! I’ve told you the question of right or wrong don’t come into business at all. Business is business. Highbrow things don’t come into it at all. Don’t you want to know what life is—don’t you want to branch out—don’t you want to see what the world has—all the people in it, the life of it? Why, man, at first you looked to me as though you weren’t a sissy or a simp.”
The moisture on Joslin’s forehead meant nothing to the man who faced him, who knew nothing of the self-loathing, the self-reproach, that lay in Joslin’s heart.
“Well, anyhow, if you lived in this country for a while you might change your point of view,” finished Haddon, pushing back his chair. “What’s your hurry, getting out of town? You haven’t got a cent to your name, you don’t know where you’re going, you don’t know what to do. I’m sorry for you——”
“Ye needn’t be,” said David Joslin. “Ye kain’t pity a mounting man—he won’t have it!”
“Hell’s bells!” ejaculated the irate man whom he addressed. “I’m not trying to change any of those damned hill-billies down there. That’s not the question. I put it up to you that you’re here in New York, and you’ve got a chance to save up a little money to buy your bally old education. You don’t have to lose any of your principles. It’s just making good—that’s all there is to it. If you want to make good you’re on. If you don’t—good-by!”
He rose from the table, irritated, his nerves still a-jangle; but a sort of compunction came to him, or perhaps the feeling that he was making a business mistake in crowding this man. A sudden half-smile came to his face as he turned when the house man brought his hat and stick for him.