“Yes, I am sure it would,” replied The Boy Broker. “My being imprisoned was due to no effort of my own, but rather to my simplicity, my lack of keenness. My release, on the other hand, was due to your brave efforts to rescue me. I walked into the trap unconsciously, you walked into it with your eyes open, risking your very life to save me. To you therefore the greater reward is due—you earned your portion, I helplessly endured the misery that has brought me mine.”
“But I did not suffer any and you did,” returned Bob, feeling keenly his helplessness when in an argument with young Randolph.
“You, however, took the chances of suffering, and those who take great chances in business, in war and in dangerous enterprises, of whatever character, if successful are well rewarded for the part they have borne. No, Bob, I would not think of keeping all this money,” continued Herbert, impressively. “We are partners in business together. Let us start with equal interest, then we should feel no jealousy toward each other. This five hundred dollars will enable us to do five times the business we are now doing, and if we save the profits we make we can still further increase it month by month.”
“Do you remember, Herbert,” said Bob, with grateful expression, “that when Mr. Goldwin failed and you were thrown out of work I urged you to take some money—only eight dollars—and you refused it?”
“Yes, I remember it well, Bob,” replied young Randolph.
“And now you ask me to take two hundred and fifty dollars from you. Why should I not refuse your offer as you refused mine?”
“Bob,” said Herbert, taking him by the hand, “that eight dollars was a reserve fund, it was all that stood between you and me and starvation or what is almost as bad—public charity. I appreciated as you little knew your generous offer, and it cut me to see how hurt you felt at my refusal to take the money. But I thought of the possibility of sickness or accident, and realized how much help those few dollars would prove in such a time. Again I felt that the money would do me no good. I know now that it would not have, for I should simply have used it up and would then have been no nearer, if so near, solving the problem that pressed me for an answer—namely, how to earn sufficient means with which to buy bread and procure a shelter for myself.”
“I think you were right, Herbert,” replied Bob, thoughtfully. “I couldn’t think so then, however, but it is plain to me now.”
“I know I was right. It was the suffering I went through in those dreary winter months and the miserable drudgery I was forced to perform that at last gave me a knowledge of this business. It was an education to me, Bob, of a most practical character, and now that it is all over I can only feel glad that I was forced out of my comfortable clerkship into the cold wintry street that had so sunny an ending.”