"Oh but I thought it was yours we were so much to look to. Wasn't it you," Perry asked, "that was to come so prodigiously to our assistance?"
"So I take it," Ralph irresistibly smiled; "and what else in the world is it then that I'm so ready for?"
Perry could still mind his steps. "I don't know that you've been striking me as quite so ready!"
"Not so ready as you expected?" It made Ralph's vision jump. "Do you mean that you want money?"
"Indeed I do, by God!"
Ralph stared in fair elation—such an oddity of relief. "Will you have some now?"
"'Now'——?" Something, at this, looked out of Perry's face as not before—a happier, easier Perry, though still embarrassed and divided and with an awkwardness of wonder that made his kinsman laugh out.
"I mean at this very moment"—and Ralph, with the happy thought, clapped his hand to the right pocket of his trousers. It was under the same sort of prompting with which in the earlier part of his talk there with Molly he had appealed to another pocket for that verified possession of his mistress's portrait which so beautifully hadn't failed him; and he consequently beamed all his renewal of support at Perry on feeling his fingers quite plunge into gold. Also he shone, after this fashion, he seemed to know, without undue surprise. The guineas, or whatever they were, literally chinked to his ear, and he saw, the next thing, that they chinked to his companion's as well—which circumstance somehow made them on the instant a perfect mine of wealth. "How much, how much will you have?" he was accordingly justified in gaily asking—and that even while it also played into his exquisite agitation that the Midmores in general had probably ever held the rattle of one's resources in any pocket a vulgar mode of allusion to them. He was so brightly in earnest with his offer, and so interesting it grew and grew each instant to himself, that he would have been willing they should take it for an American freedom caught in the fact. So if it was one it should be a great one, and Ralph kept this up. "You've only to say, you know!" Perry, his head half bent with his trouble, gazed with a bovine air as from over a fence and under his brows—while Ralph felt such surprise, after an instant, at the degree of his difficulty, which suggested positive physical pain, that superlative soothing seemed none too much. His personal confidence moreover had at the first fine touch of his fortune shot straight up, and he rose with it to an extraordinary height. "I want you to understand, you see, that there's really no sum you mayn't name——!" And he chinked and chinked.
Perry's breath, as it had more than once done before, came shorter and shorter, but he still stood off. "You carry all your fortune about you?"
"Not all—only a goodish handful, but a clutch can follow a clutch." And he so liked his clutch that he drew it forth and held it high, shaking it in the air and laughing. "Guess what this alone comes to."