“You don’t know what you are talking about. Who told you to say this?”
“The foolishness I inherited from my mother. Good-bye!”
[CHAPTER VIII]
A CONSULTATION WITH AN ATTORNEY.
It was one thing for Morey to announce that he meant to take care of his mother’s debts. It was another thing to decide just how this promise was to be carried out. But, although Morey had climbed the dusty, narrow stairs to Major Carey’s office with nervous dread, he came down with something of assurance—as far as one could make out from the expression on the boy’s countenance. His face was red, he was perspiring, his hat was well back on his mussed-up hair and he still held, absent-mindedly, the scrap of paper on which he had been figuring.
Within the entryway at the bottom of the stairs he paused, scratched his head, took out and counted all the money he had in the world—seventy-five cents. Then he laughed.
“I only need $14,091.75 more,” he said.
For some moments he gazed out into the almost silent street. On a sudden impulse he pulled his hat down, started forward, and, reaching the sidewalk, gazed to the right and left. Midway in the next block and over the postoffice he saw a sign, in washed-out blue and pale gold: “E. L. Lomax, Attorney and Counselor At Law. Fire Insurance and Money Loaned.”
He started toward it but, passing the drug store on the corner, he entered, purchased a sheet of paper, an envelope and a stamp and on a greasy soda water counter wrote this note: