"No? Why, look here! Here's a check. See—I'm signing it in blank. I'm leaving it to you to fill it in for what you please. For what you please for your first year for us, and the contract to run five years at the same rate. Remember you've been trimmed once and you're likely to be trimmed again."
"Let them trim me and keep on trimming me! The work is here and I did it. They know it and I know it. If nobody but myself and my God know, we know. And no official or unofficial crookedness can wipe it out."
"But that little fellow up-stairs with his face against the screen?"
"It's that little fellow I'm thinking of. He'll never have to explain why his father reneged on a job he was trusted to do."
"But you haven't promised anybody in writing?"
"No."
"And, as I make it out, you haven't even given your word?"
"No."
"Then what right has anybody to——"
"He don't need to have any right. He just thinks I'm the kind of a man he can count on, and, in a show down, that's the kind of a man I reckon I want him or any other man to think I am."