“Well now, wait a minute,” said Aleck. “I haven’t finished my remarks about it. In the first place, there’s more than I know what to do with, without it, and in the second place, I owe it to you if there wasn’t, for you have made life in the store a different thing to me a thousand times over. Do you think I could ever have kept up heart if I hadn’t thought so much of your being there every day, or could ever have been patient through it all if I hadn’t seen such a little fighter at my side? So that’s settled so far, and now in the third place, I can’t desert the ship, unless you will take the whole command, and if you do you ought to have the whole profits. And in the fourth place,” and Aleck put his arm around his future partner’s neck again in a most unbusinesslike way, “in the fourth place, it’s all in the family, whatever you do and have, you dear, little old soldier? Don’t you know nobody could be closer to us all? Flesh and blood couldn’t bring it any nearer, and if we’re so proud of you now, what will it be by-and-by?”
Nobody could resist Aleck. It was all settled with the doctor and Thorndyke and everybody else, just as he would like it, and before they really knew what he was about, and Thorndyke very soon found himself really steering the ship, and Aleck only “hanging about more or less,” as he had said. A good deal “less,” Thorndyke thought, but it was better than losing him altogether, and he was determined he should never know how he missed him.
CHAPTER XXV.
Tom sauntered into Halliday’s now and then, as he always had, but Thorndyke saw something, he couldn’t tell what, that worried him more and more; at all events Tom looked more hopeless and forlorn every time.
“What a man you’re making, Thorndyke!” he said one day; “it was in you, I suppose, and it wasn’t in me; that’s the difference. But you don’t know what a chance you’ve had. Did Aleck ever badger you or crowd you in all the time you were together?”
“Aleck! Why, you know him, Tom!”
“Yes, I suppose so; only I can’t imagine anybody’s leaving you in peace and quiet all the time. Well, I might have made something, perhaps, if I’d been here, though not much, probably. I always was a stupid, blundering fellow, and never should have been of much account, anyhow. I’m none at all now, though, and I’d give up and let everything go to the bottom, if there was nobody that thought he could hold on to me if I didn’t. They’ll find out their mistake some day; but I suppose I ought to hold on till they do.”
“You wouldn’t like any one else to say that,” said Thorndyke, greatly troubled.