Percy wasn't so chipper now. "But, father," he protested, "I haven't got three million dollars; and you know very well I can't possibly raise any three million dollars."
"Yes, you can," said Ham. "There's the million I gave you: that makes one. There's your interest in the business; I'll buy it back for a million: that makes two. And I'll take your note at five per cent, for the third million. A fair offer, Mr. Graham?"
"Very liberal, indeed, Mr. Huggins," I answered.
"But I won't have anything to live on, let alone any chance to pay you back, if you take my interest in the business away," pleaded Percy.
"I've thought of that, too," said his father, "and I'm going to give you a job. The experience you've had in this campaign ought to make you worth twenty-five dollars a week to us in our option department. Then you can board at home for five dollars a week, and pay ten more on your note. That'll leave you ten per for clothes and extras."
Percy wriggled and twisted and tried tears. Talked a lot of flip-flap flub-doodle, but Ham was all through with the proud-popper business, and the young man found him as full of knots as a hickory root, and with a hide that would turn the blade of an ax.
Percy was simply in the fix of the skunk that stood on the track and humped up his back at the lightning express—there was nothing left of him except a deficit and the stink he'd kicked up. And a fellow can't dictate terms with those assets. In the end he left the room with a ring in his nose.
After all, there was more in Percy than cussedness, for when he finally decided that it was a case of root hog or die with him, he turned in and rooted. It took him ten years to get back into his father's confidence and a partnership, and he was still paying on the million-dollar note when the old man died and left him his whole fortune. It would have been cheaper for me in the end if I had let the old man disinherit him, because when Percy ran that Mess Pork corner three years ago, he caught me short a pretty good line and charged me two dollars a barrel more than any one else to settle. Explained that he needed the money to wipe out the unpaid balance of a million-dollar note that he'd inherited from his father.
I simply mention Percy to show why I'm a little slow to regard members of my family as charitable institutions that I should settle endowments on. If there's one thing I like less than another, it's being regarded as a human meal-ticket. What is given to you always belongs to some one else, and if the man who gave it doesn't take it back, some fellow who doesn't have to have things given to him is apt to come along and run away with it. But what you earn is your own, and apt to return your affection for it with interest—pretty good interest.
Your affectionate father,