“Well?” said Larry, when McKnight refolded the letter and put it back in his pocket.
McKnight didn’t answer the implied query. Instead, he put one of his own.
“How far would two thousand dollars go toward boosting little Purdy through his four years, Donnie?”
“How far?—Great cats! it would take him all the way through. It’s as much as, or more than, I expect to spend in the four years!”
“All right,” said McKnight coolly. “I’ll write you a check for it when I get back to the house.”
“But see here—good goodness, Ollie, you can’t do anything like that!” Larry broke out. “In the first place, Purdy won’t take it—no fellow would; and in the next—”
“Let’s knock the pins down in one alley before they’re set up in another,” cut in the offhand maker of scholarships. “Of course, one of the conditions would have to be that Purdy doesn’t know where it comes from. We’ll call it the Red-Wagon Scholarship, and let it go at that.”
“But even then, he’d consider it a loan and want to pay it back.”
“You can’t pay a scholarship back. But that’ll be all right; if he ever gets fixed so he can, let him pass it along—boost some other fellow who needs it. You may as well quit chucking hurdles in the way, Donnie. This is the first time I’ve ever given anything that’s cost me something, and you can’t choke me off. Besides, I’d like to shock Dad—just this one time, you know. I’d give a hen worth fifty dollars if I could be there to see, when he gets the news.”