“I don’t think I’ll ride this trip, thanks,” returned Allison, and, as the rector also declined with pleasant thanks, Allison gave the voyagers a hearty push, and walked back to the camp fire.
“I received the ultimatum of your vestry to-day, Doctor Boyd,” observed Allison when they were alone. “Still that eventual fifty million.”
“Well, yes,” returned the rector briskly, and he backed up comfortably to the blaze. He was a different man now. “We discussed your proposition thoroughly, and decided that, in ten years, the property is worth fifty million to you, for the purpose you have in mind. Consequently why take less.”
Allison surveyed him shrewdly for a moment.
“That’s the argument of a bandit,” he remarked. “Why accept all that the prisoner has when his friends can raise a little more?”
“I don’t see the use of metaphor,” retorted the rector, who dealt professionally in it. “Business is business.”
Allison grunted, and flicked his ashes into the fire.
“By George, you’re right,” he agreed. “I’ve been trying to handle you like a church, but now I’m going after you like the business organisation you are.”
The Reverend Smith Boyd reddened. The charge that Market Square Church was a remarkably lucrative enterprise was becoming too general for comfort.
“The vestry has given you their decision,” he returned, standing stiff and straight, with his hands clasped behind him. “You may pay for the Vedder Court tenement property a cash sum which, in ten years, will accrue to fifty million dollars, or you may let it alone,” and his tone was as forcefully crisp as Allison’s, though he could not hide the musical timbre of it.