“Yes, everywhere. He can’t go out around the block without the tutor sticks close at his heels. If he would only send the boy to school I would have a better show.”
“Do you know where the boy sleeps?”
“I bet you I do, but I don’t intend to fool around there,” said Henderson, growing alarmed. “He sleeps in a room opening off from the tutor’s, and I tell you I wouldn’t take a hand in it. That tutor is a big man and is a match for both of us.”
“Could he get away with a sand-bag?” said the friend, shutting one eye and looking at Henderson with the other. “A man has to be wide awake to meet such a thing as that.”
“You may try it if you want to, and I’ll give you half you make,” said Henderson. “My brother is going to die in the course of a year or two, and by the end of that time I shall have money enough.”
“You can if he dies without making a will; but how do you intend to get around it if he names the boy as his heir?”
“If he doesn’t adopt him it is all right. I tell you that would make me mad. In that case I should probably wake up and do something, and I should find myself in jail before I was a week older.”
“Not if you manage rightly. But I must go on. I must have that land before three o’clock or the fat will all be in the fire.”
The friend walked away and Henderson kept on his road down the street. We can see from his conversation that he was not a bad man at heart, but he ought to have been rich, and in that case he would in a very short time have found himself penniless. His expectations ran greatly ahead of his income, which at this time amounted to just nothing at all. All he made aside from his brother’s allowance was what he gained from little speculations, and, furthermore, he was in the hands of men who generally called on him for everything they wanted, and with a fair prospect of getting it. But now that Mr. Davenport had refused him any more money,—he had told him in plain language that he would have to pay his own debts in future,—their occupation was gone, and they must look elsewhere. He sent for his clothing during the day, and took up his abode at the hotel, where he tried to make up his mind what he ought to do.
“I have my choice between two courses of action,” said he, as he lighted a cigar and sat down in his room to think the matter over. “One is, to shut Bob up in a lunatic asylum; and the other is, to go fishing with him and shove him overboard. Now, if anyone can tell me which of those two is the safest, I will be ready to listen to him. Nothing else seems likely to happen to him.”