“Boy!” said the trembling Peternot, “you don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“Yes, I do; I’m talking just what a good many other folks talk, only not to your face. They say, ‘There’s old Squire Peternot, seventy years old, with one foot almost in the grave,—rich enough in all conscience,—don’t use even the interest on what money he has, but lays it up, lays it up,—lives meanly as the poorest farmer in town,—never gives a dollar, except when he can’t help it, and then you’d think it hurt him like pulling his teeth,—and yet there he is, trying to get Aunt Patsy’s little house and lot away from her,—making tight bargains, screwing his workmen’s wages down to the lowest notch’; that’s what I’ve heard, every word of it, and you know that every word of it is true!”
“I have my own ideas about property,” said the squire; “and no man—no prudent man—likes to squander what’s his own.”
“And so you, with all your wealth, come and grab this money, which is all I have in the world, and offer me five dollars to give it up to you! You are a prudent man! I say squander!”
“I’ll give you twenty dollars of it,—and that’s liberal, I’m sure,” said Peternot, a good deal shaken by what Jack had said, but unable, from long habit, to take his hand from any worldly goods that it chanced to cover.
“Twenty dollars!” laughed Jack, with scornful defiance. “I don’t make bargains on Sunday.”
This cool sarcasm caused the worthy Peternot to wince as at the taste of some bitter medicine. “I don’t bargain on the Lord’s day, neither. But I see the necessity of coming to some sort of terms with you.”
“Very well; then you just walk off and leave me and my dog to take care of this money; those are the only terms you can come to with me.”
“But what do you propose to do, if I don’t walk off?”
“Stay here,—Lion and I,—and hang on to our treasure-trove. Your nephew, who knows so much about law, advised me to keep possession,—to fight for it,—and I will.”