He didn't know. Perhaps he could. But what was the use of talkin' that way? For him to pick up a thousand would be about as easy as for a paralyzed man with boxin' gloves on to pick up a flea, or words to that effect. No, no, 'twas no use! he must go to the poorhouse! and so forth and so on.
"You hold on," I says. "Don't you engage your poorhouse berth yet. You keep mum and say nothin' to nobody and let me think this over a spell. I need somethin' to keep me interested and ... I'll see you to-morrow sometime. Good night."
I went home thinkin' and I thought till pretty nigh one o'clock. Then I decided I was a fool even to think for five minutes. Hadn't I sworn to be careful and never take another risk? I was sorry for poor old Winthrop, but I couldn't afford to mix pity and good legal tender; that was the sort of blue and yeller drink that filled the poor-debtors' courts. And, besides, wasn't I pridin' myself on bein' a gentleman of leisure. If I got mixed up in this, no tellin' what I might be led into. Hadn't I bragged to Pike about—Oh, I was a fool!
Which was all right, only, after listenin' to the breakfast conversation at the Poquit House, down I goes to the store and afore the forenoon was over I was Winthrop Adams Beanblossom's silent partner to the extent of twenty-five hundred dollars. I was busy once more and glad of it, even though Pike was goin' to get a hat free.
This was in January. By early March I was twice as busy and not half as glad. You see I'd cal'lated that the store was all right, all it needed was financin'. Trade was just asleep, taking a nap, and I could wake it up. I was wrong. Trade was dead, and, barrin' the comin' of a prophet or some miracle worker to fetch it to life, what that shop was really sufferin' for was an undertaker. My twenty-five hundred was funeral expenses, that's all.
But the prophet came. Yes, sir, he came and fetched his miracle with him. One evenin', after all the reg'lar customers, who set around in chairs borrowin' our genuine tobacco and payin' for it with counterfeit funny stories, had gone—after everybody, as we cal'lated, had cleared out—Beanblossom and I set down to hold our usual autopsy over the remains of the fortni't's trade. 'Twas a small corpse and didn't take long to dissect. We'd lost twenty-one dollars and sixty-eight cents, and the only comfort in that was that 'twas seventy-six cents less than the two weeks previous. The weather had been some cooler and less stuff had sp'iled on our hands; that accounted for the savin'.
Beanblossom—I'd got into the habit of callin' him "Pullet" 'cause his general build was so similar to a moultin' chicken—he vowed he couldn't understand it.
"I think I shall give up buyin' so liberally, Cap'n Snow," says he. "If we didn't keep on buyin' we shouldn't lose half so much," he says.
"Yes," says I, "that's logic. And if we give up sellin' we shouldn't lose the other half. You and me are all right as fur as we go, Pullet, and I guess we've gone about as fur as we can."
"Please don't call me 'Pullet,'" he says, dignified. "When I think of what I once was, it—"