It was a bold stroke, but it went home. The color crept slowly from the Elder’s sanguine face.
“I have no intention of offering you charity.”
“You know damn well you dasn’t. I’m not speaking of charity, and you know that, too, Jim. I’m speaking of blood money, and I mean just what I say.”
“You are still the same doubting Thomas, I see. Do you recall how you were always the last one––er––to be won over to a new enterprise?” The Elder tried to smile.
“I had good reason to go slow. A mite of caution is a purty fair endowment of nature where some people’s schemes is concerned. If I’d used a little of it last spring I’d not be in the fix I am to-day.”
“But that bump of caution on your head is pretty hard on your friends.”
“I cal’late it won’t hurt my friends none. We wa’n’t speaking of them just then. Anyhow, it’s kept me with a clean conscience to sleep with, and I’d a heap sight rather ship with clear rigging than be ballasted with some 233 people’s money and have to make bedfellows with their conscience.”
“Yes,––er––ahem––quite true,” was the hasty reply. “What can I do for you, Josiah? If I can be of the least service,––er––I shall be only too glad.”
“It depends on what you’ve got to offer me. The fust thing I’d like to suggest is that you stop that there er-ing and hem-ing. There ain’t no one here but me, and it don’t make no impression. Being that you’re so infernal anxious to get back to boyhood days we might just as well go all-hog on it. You didn’t try none of that foolishness then.”