"I'm not going," he said decisively, when Mrs. Bing brought the matter up as he was smoking in the library an hour or so after dinner. "No cripples and misery in mine at present, thank you! I wouldn't get over it for a week. Just send them our best wishes and a twenty-dollar gold piece."
There were tears in the Shepherd's eyes when his mother helped him into his night clothes that evening.
"I hate that twenty-dollar gold piece!" he exclaimed.
"Laddie boy! Why should ye be sayin' that?"
The shiny piece of metal was lying on the window-sill. She took it in her hand.
"It's as cold as a snow-bank!" she exclaimed.
"I don't want to touch it! I'm shivering now," said the Shepherd. "Put it away in the drawer. It makes me sick. It cheated me out of seeing Mr. Bing."