The youngest of a large family, Link had been accustomed all his life to Mrs. Bingham's many whimsicalities.
"I s'pose you can smell he's a thief, just as you can tell when it's goin' to rain, or the butter's comin', by the smell."
"Well, you needn't laugh, Lincoln. I can," maintained the old lady, stoutly. "An' I ain't goin' to put a red cent o' my money into his pocket—f'r there's where it 'ud go to."
She yielded at last, and received a little bank-book in return for her money. "Jest about all I'll ever get," she said, privately; and thereafter out of her brass-bowed spectacles with an eagle's gaze she watched the banker go by. But the banker, seeing the dear old soul at the window looking out at him, always smiled and bowed, unaware of her suspicion.
At the end of the year he bought the lot next his rented house, and began building one of his own, a modest little affair, shaped like a pork-pie with a cupola, or a Tam-o'-Shanter cap—a style of architecture which became fashionable at once.
He worked heroically to get the location of the plow-factory at Bluff Siding, and all but succeeded; but Tyre, once their ally, turned against them, and refused to consider the fact of the Siding's position at the centre of the county. However, for some reason or other, the town woke up to something of a boom during the next two years. Several large farmers decided to retire and live off the sweat of some other fellow's brow, and so built some houses of the pork-pie order, and moved into town.
This inflow of moneyed men from the country resulted in the establishment of a "seminary of learning" on the hillside, where the Soldiers' Home was to be located. This called in more farmers from the country, and a new hotel was built, a sash-and-door factory followed, and Burt McPhail set up a feed-mill.
All this improvement unquestionably dated from the opening of the bank, and the most unreasoning partisans of the banker held him to be the chief cause of the resulting development of the town, though he himself modestly disclaimed any hand in the affair.
Had Bluff Siding been a city, the highest civic honors would have been open to Banker Sanford; indeed, his name was repeatedly mentioned in connection with the county offices.
"No, gentlemen," he explained, firmly, but courteously, in Wilson's store one night; "I'm a banker, not a politician. I can't ride two horses."