“You must not refuse,” Ned wrote. “If money is what you need, let me know, and I will send you enough to foot all your bills. I am rich now, and can afford to do it. Your father ought to be willing to give you a short vacation, after you have worked so hard in the store.”
The letter was mailed in due time, and Ned impatiently counted the days that must elapse before an answer could arrive. It came at last, and Ned almost danced with delight when he read it. We copy one paragraph in it, just to show what kind of a boy he was whom Ned had invited to his house. We shall meet him very shortly, and be in his company a good deal, and one always likes to know something about a fellow before he is introduced to him. The paragraph referred to ran as follows:—
“You must be having jolly times down there, and since I read your letter I have been more than ever dissatisfied with the store. I should be only too glad to visit you, and the want of money is the only thing that stands in my way. It is all that has kept me in Foxboro’ so long. In regard to the governor’s giving me a holiday—I shall not ask him for it, for he would be sure to say ‘No;’ and neither can I write you anything definite about my brother. He is getting to be a regular old sober-sides, and if I am going down there, I would rather he would stay at home.”
The rest of the letter was taken up by the writer in trying to make Ned understand that Gus had fully resolved to visit Texas, and that he should be very much disappointed, if anything happened to keep him at home. He did not say this in so many words, but Ned was smart enough to see that he meant it all the same.
“He shall come,” said Ned, as he folded up the letter and hurried off to find his father. “And I hope he will come alone, for if his brother is getting to be a milk-sop, we don’t want him down here. Now, the next thing is to make father hand over the money.”
This was a task Ned had been dreading ever since he wrote the invitation; but he went about it with an air which said plainly enough that he knew he should succeed. Uncle John objected rather feebly, at first, and said he wasn’t sure that he had any right to spend George’s money in that way; but Ned had an answer to every objection, and stuck to his point until he gained it.
“You mustn’t forget that I may own this property myself some day,” said he. “If George does not live until he is of age, everything falls to me. If that should ever happen, you would think me awful stingy if I should refuse you a paltry hundred dollars.”
Ned certainly talked very glibly about spending his cousin’s money. He had seen the time when, if he chanced to have a hundred cents in his pocket, over and above what his debts amounted to, he considered himself lucky. It was not a paltry sum in his eyes, by any means.