"Yes," says I, "so I've heard him say. Gettin' ready to stand in with him when he gets my job, are you, Sim?"
That shook him up a mite. 'Twas common talk around town that Sim and Ike was pretty thick. He turned red under his freckles.
"No, no!" he sputtered. "Course I ain't! I'm standin' by you, Cap'n Snow, and you know it. But, all the same, Ike's a smart boy. He's gettin' rich fast, Ike is."
"Sold another cookstove, has he?"
"He sells a lot of 'em. Sold two last month. But that ain't it. He's got foresight and friends in the stock exchange up to Boston. He's buyin' copper stocks and they—"
He stopped short; thought his tongue was runnin' away with him, I presume likely. But I was interested and I kept on.
"Oh!" says I; "he's buyin' coppers, is he? Well, where does he get the U. S. coppers to do it with? Is Uncle Ichabod backin' him? Has the old man's rheumatiz struck to his brains?"
"Course he ain't backin' him. He don't know nothin' of stocks. He ain't up-to-date same as Ike. But he'll be glad enough when his nephew makes fifty thousand. When he finds that out he'll—"
"He'll never find it out on this earth," I cut in. "If he found out that Ike made fifty dollars, all on his own hook, he'd drop dead with heart disease. If he didn't, everybody else in town would. But it takes money to buy stocks, don't it? I never knew Ike had any cash of his own."
"He's in the firm, ain't he! And Hamilton and Co. are——Hello! here comes the depot wagon."