"I might want a salary, but it would be purely nominal; a hundred a week or so."
Mr. Clover was highly amused. The only reason on earth that he would admit another man to a partnership with him was that he must have ready cash. His shoe soles were wearing out.
"I'm afraid our business wouldn't suit you, anyhow, Mr. Wallingford," he said with bantering sarcasm. "Our office is very plain, for one thing, and we have no rug on the floor."
"We'll put rugs down right away, and if the offices are not as swell as they make 'em we'll move," Wallingford promptly announced. "I might give you two thousand for a half interest."
Mr. Clover drank a glass of champagne and considered. Two thousand dollars, at the present stage of his finances, was real money. The Noble Order of Friendly Hands had been started on a "shoestring" of five hundred dollars, and the profits of the Friendly Hands Trust Company had been nil up to the present time. This offer was more than a temptation; it was a fall.
"Couldn't think of it," he nevertheless coldly replied. "But I'll sell you half my stock at par. The secretary has ten shares, and dummy directors four. I hold eighty-six."
"Forty-three hundred dollars!" figured Wallingford. "And you'd charge me that for a brick with the plating worn thin! You forget the value of my expert services."
"What do you know about fraternal insurance?" demanded Clover, who had reddened under fire.
"Not a thing," confessed Mr. Wallingford. "All I know is how to get money. If I go in with you, the first thing we do is to reorganize on a two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar basis."
Mr. Clover pounded his fist upon the table until the glasses rang, and laughed so loudly that the head waiter shivered and frowned. Seeing, however, that the noise came from Mr. Wallingford's corner, he smiled. He was venal, was the head waiter, and he remembered the pleasant, velvety rustle of a bill in his palm.