“I really am not asking for any presents,” I said.
That was jackass talk for me to make, and I knew it. Lord! we needed all the money we could scrape. But a funny sort of pride swelled up in me. I did not propose to be outdone in politeness. Never had I had municipal attentions shown to my humble self before I came to Breed City. They did not realize all the good it had done me.
“This is no proposition of that sort,” declared the mayor. “But we are so sure of Newell’s judgment that we know we shall make big profits on this stock. There are six of us. We propose to give you twelve thousand dollars, so that the amount you have paid for the stock will be handed back to you also. We’d like you to remember that Breed City was good to you to the extent of ten thousand dollars’ clear profit.”
That asinine pride was prompting me to split the difference with them. But across the street just then I saw the old judge peering about, evidently in a panic of anxiety about me because I had been gone so long with all that money. Another memory jogged me at that moment. I was morally bound to hand Dodovah Vose some profit on his five hundred dollars. Haggling with those enthusiastic citizens of Breed would be feeding my fool pride at the expense of two old men.
“It’s a trade, gentlemen, with all thanks to you!”
The mayor was president of the bank and I guess the rest were directors; at any rate, the cashier, in about two minutes, was asking me how I would have it!
I asked for currency—big bills. I had a boyish, eager hankering to lug the money to the judge, to show it to him, to have him count it and feel it and know that he could face the taxpayers of Levant, even if he couldn’t satisfy all his creditors. But even bankruptcy, thought I, was not State prison; my uncle would be cheated out of that part of his revenge. My fingers itched and my eyes shone while the cashier nipped at the comers of the bills with moistened fingers. He wrapped them in oiled paper and I sunk them carefully in my clothes!
I made as quick a getaway as politeness would allow.
As I remember it, I left a promise to come back to Breed City and settle down!
I caught Judge Kingsley by the arm and hurried him down-street and into the hotel.