“I’ve no choice in the matter,” he said, shortly. “The old man says if I don’t I can shift for myself hereafter.”
“Well, that’s my case too. Why not go out west together? We’ve heads and hands of our own—why shouldn’t we earn our living for three years? Chase can’t keep me out of my money after I’m twenty-one.”
“Oh, it’s easy enough to talk about earning a living,” said Henderson, impatiently, “but I tell you what, Crawford, you’d sing another tune after you’d tried it a few months. You wouldn’t find it much like living as you do here, driving out when you choose, and always having your pockets full of money.”
“They are anything but full most of the time,” put in Crawford.
“Yes, but you can get all the credit you want. It would be a very different thing, I tell you, if you had nothing but what you earned. Neither you nor I have learned anything by which we could earn a dollar,” said Henderson, gruffly.
“But I say, Hendy, it will be mighty tough to have to go back to school and eat humble pie. Think how the fellows’ll chaff us if we meekly agree to be good little boys and keep the rules hereafter.”
“Let ’em chaff,” growled Henderson. “We’ll soon show them that we mean to play our little games in the future about as we’ve done in the past.”
“But we’ve got to promise not to do anything of the sort before we can go back,” objected Crawford.
“Promise!” echoed Henderson scornfully. “Who cares for a promise? We’ll get back on our promise and then forget all about it. What cuts me in this business,” he went on, moodily, “is that I’ve got to drop out of the company. I was a fool not to think of that before I told that yarn to Bobby.”
“I declare, I haven’t once thought of that. You’ll have to resign, of course,” said Crawford.