Larry shook his head.
“I can’t go back that far, Purdy—and I don’t think you ought to. The money’s doing a good job now, whatever it did before it came to you.”
“But I think you might at least tell me who gave it. Supposing it happens to be somebody that I’d rather die than take it from? There’s a bunch of just such fellows here in Sheddon.”
“Don’t you lose any sleep about that. When the thing was put up to me, I asked myself just one question, and that was if I’d take it if that same fellow offered it to me and I needed it. That question sort of answered itself. I’ve got a lot of that same poverty pride myself, Purdy, but I’d have done it in a minute, if only for one reason; I could see that it was going to be the best thing that ever happened to that fellow to give it.”
“And you won’t tell me his name?”
“I can’t; that was the one thing he made me promise.”
“Am I never going to know it?”
“That’s up to him. And he’s right about that, too. What you don’t know needn’t worry you, and you don’t have to feel under any obligations. Now, let’s get to work on this descrip. It’s pretty stiff for to-morrow.”
It was perhaps a week beyond this talk, one evening when Larry was putting on his coat to go over to the Micrometer office with his athletic notes, that Purdick looked up from his book to say:
“Seeing much of Dickie Maxwell these days, Donnie?”