"There are some good-hearted brutes even in this business," growled Fred, "and don't you forget it."
"Do you think," I asked with a twinge of shame, "he saw through your telephoning business and that rigmarole of yours to me in the booth?"
"Damn if I don't think he did!" roared Fred. "But never mind. He's a sport. And some day, when we're big guns, we'll show him that we appreciate his hand-out by putting him on to something good—see if we don't!"
I felt as shamefaced as though we had committed a felony. Yet I suppose that this is the ordinary comparatively innocent chicane of even honest business, remnants of oriental chaffering and huckstering that still survive. I am hoping we shall grow out of it. Though at times I suspect a certain flamboyancy of temperament in Fred that makes him resort to such shifts rather than not.
A man who had purchased some bonds called up and inquired whether we would take them back. There was no reason for Fred's offering anything but an endeavor to dispose of them. But instead his grandiose reply was:
"Why, certainly we shall take those bonds back, Mr. Smith—and as many more of them as you've got. Yes, bring them down by all means."
Once he had hung up the receiver he turned toward me with blank dismay, muttering:
"Now what the hell shall we do with those things?"
I own to a flash of genuine anger at his imbecile untruthfulness.
"You don't know what to do?" I spluttered. "Then why on earth did you speak as though you had a dozen buyers waiting in a row?"