Matt shot a startled glance at Coble’s beaming face. What he read there supplemented the sensational suggestion of the Titan’s words. A nervous thrill ran through all his body. The thought was like a lightning-flash, at once swift, dazzling, and terrifying. But without waiting to analyze his state of mind, he felt immediately that there was one thing which at the outset rendered the idea impossible. Honesty required that he should instantly put a stop to the parent’s overtures, by informing him that he was a dishonored man—that he had been in prison. But still he shrank from self-exposure. The union was so impossible that it seemed superfluous to humiliate himself.
“Maybe,” he replied; “but five thousand’s only the uppiest up, as you call it. If I didn’t get there, I might be thought a humbug.”
“Oh! any smart man who saw that shark would take the risk of that; and, even if you didn’t get to the uppiest up, there ’d be no fear of your coming down again to the downiest down.”
Matt turned his eyes away, and his fingers tattooed nervously on the stem of his glass.
“That Frenchy friend of yours now, he had the sense and the sarse to want my gal, but, of course, no proper parent would trust his darter to a man like that. So there he lays in the downiest down—good name for jail, eh? Ho! ho!”
Matt wished his companion could moderate his accents; he did not relish this thunderous talk of jail.
“Well, I must be going now,” he said.
“I’m with you; I’m with you,” genially thundered Coble, sauntering after him into the sunny street. “You just think that pointer o’ mine over; it lets you keep your independence and your high notions, and you ain’t indebted to anybody. All you’ve got to do is to find a purty gal who’s got money and who won’t fool it away, a gal who’s been raised simply and can do her own cookin’ and make her own dresses, and don’t play the pianner; you find a gal like that, with a sensible father that don’t think wuss of a young man because he’s been in the downiest down.”
“You know?” Matt faltered. He came to a halt.
“Of course I know. Warn’t it in the paper?”