“Oh, how sorry I am.”
“No doubt of it,” squeaked the other again, “but go, get your charity out on deck. There parade the pursy peacocks; they don’t cough down here in desertion and darkness, like poor old me. Look how scaly a pauper I am, clove with this churchyard cough. Ugh, ugh, ugh!”
“Again, how sorry I feel, not only for your cough, but your poverty. Such a rare chance made unavailable. Did you have but the sum named, how I could invest it for you. Treble profits. But confidence—I fear that, even had you the precious cash, you would not have the more precious confidence I speak of.”
“Ugh, ugh, ugh!” flightily raising himself. “What’s that? How, how? Then you don’t want the money for yourself?”
“My dear, dear sir, how could you impute to me such preposterous self-seeking? To solicit out of hand, for my private behoof, an hundred dollars from a perfect stranger? I am not mad, my dear sir.”
“How, how?” still more bewildered, “do you, then, go about the world, gratis, seeking to invest people’s money for them?”
“My humble profession, sir. I live not for myself; but the world will not have confidence in me, and yet confidence in me were great gain.”
“But, but,” in a kind of vertigo, “what do—do you do—do with people’s money? Ugh, ugh! How is the gain made?”
“To tell that would ruin me. That known, every one would be going into the business, and it would be overdone. A secret, a mystery—all I have to do with you is to receive your confidence, and all you have to do with me is, in due time, to receive it back, thrice paid in trebling profits.”
“What, what?” imbecility in the ascendant once more; “but the vouchers, the vouchers,” suddenly hunkish again.