“What are you going to live on—the interest of your debts?”
“I am going to live on the interest of my money,” answered Arthur, loftily. “By the death of a relative who lived out West, my father and I have come into possession of a very nice little fortune.”
“How much?” asked Wiggins, incredulously.
“About four millions.”
“Aw! Get out!”
“I didn’t expect you to believe it, but those are the figures. So you will readily see that I am not obliged to earn my living by standing behind the counter. I’ve given him something to talk about,” soliloquized Arthur, as he walked away with a slow and dignified step, “and in half an hour the news will be all over town.”
Having provided himself with a cigar, Arthur took a long walk toward the outskirts of the town, in order to give the errand-boy time to “get in his work,” as he expressed it.
And he was not a little flattered by the attention he received when he came back.
Wiggins must have labored industriously, for everybody seemed to have heard the news. People who had seldom taken the trouble to speak to him when he was nothing but a dry-goods clerk, stopped to congratulate him on his good fortune; and among those who were the most cordial in their greeting was the tailor to whom he was indebted for the clothes he had on his back; the cigar-vender who had been confiding enough to furnish him with his Havanas; and the jeweller, who had not yet been paid for the seal-ring that adorned the third finger of his left hand.
“I tell you, money makes a big difference in the position one occupies in the world and in the estimation of those around him,” said Arthur, as he bent his steps towards his cheerless home, after spending an hour in airing himself on the principal streets. “But didn’t I snub some of those fellows in fine style? I wish I could stay here, so that I could snub them every day.”