Griswold forgot his own real, though possibly indirect, obligation to Jasper Grierson.
"That is where you made a mistake: you should have told him to go to hell with his money!" was his acrid comment. And then: "How near can you come to lifting this note to-morrow, Raymer?"
"'Near' isn't the word. Possibly I might sweep the corners and gather up twelve or fifteen thousand dollars."
"That will do," said the querist, shortly. "Make it ten thousand, and I'll contribute the remaining ninety."
Raymer sprang out of his chair as if its padded arms had been suddenly turned into high-voltage electrodes.
"You will?—you'll do that for me, Griswold?" he said, with a queer stridency in his voice that made the word-craftsman, always on the watch for apt similes, think of a choked chicken. But Raymer was swallowing hard and trying to go on. "By Jove—it's the most generous thing I ever heard of!—but I can't let you do it. I haven't a thing in the world to offer you but the stock, and that may not be worth the paper it is printed on if Jasper Grierson has made up his mind to break me."
"Sit down again and let us thresh it out," said Griswold. "How much of a Socialist are you, Raymer?"
The young ironmaster sat down, gasping a little at the sudden wrenching aside of the subject.
"Why, I don't know; enough to want every man to have a square deal, I guess."
"Including the men in your shops?"