Billy then pulled a book—a medical work he had borrowed—from under the desk, and showed Mr. Prunty a passage in which it was laid down that people's toes come off sometimes, in a most inconvenient way, in the last stages of Bright's disease. Mr. Prunty read the whole page, including a description of the way that dread disease ruins the complexion, by making it pasty and corpselike, and then laid the book down with conviction in his eyes.
"From this," said he, motioning at the book with his glasses, "it would seem to be all off."
"If it's Bright's disease," said Billy, "that causes this lesion of the major lower digit, the prognosis is, no doubt, extremely grave. But while there's life, you know—"
"Yes," answered Mr. Prunty, "that is a comfort, of course. Does he know what ails him?"
"He is fully aware of his condition," said Billy, "but, unfortunately, not yet resigned to it." (I should think not.)
"I see you have been studying this thing out," said Mr. Prunty, "as exactly as if it had been an engineering problem; and I want to say, Mr. Helmerston, that I like your style. If we ever control this business the future of such careful and competent and far-sighted men as yourself—in fact, I may say your future—will be bright and assured. Have you any more information for me as to this—this sad affair of Blunt's?"
Billy thanked him, and said he hadn't, at present, and Mr. Prunty went away, trying to look sad. Billy went to the bank in Pa's name and arranged for a lot of money to be used in acquiring the Prunty stock, if it should be needed. The stock was worth twice as much, and the bank people knew it, and couldn't have believed, of course, that we would get it for that. Then the Pruntys made an engagement with me for Pa over the telephone, for a certain hour of a certain day, and I told Billy.
"The time has come," said Billy, when the plot began thickening in this way, "for Little Willie to beard the lion in his den. Smuggle me into the room an hour before the Pruntys are due, darling, and we'll cast the die."
I was all pale and quivery when I kissed Billy—in that sort of serious way in which we women kiss people we like, when we tell them to come back with their shields or on them—and pushed him into the room.
I heard all they said. It was dark in there, and Pa thought at first that it was a Prunty. Pa was sitting in the Morris chair, with his foot on a rest.