“I don’t think you’ll go there from that cause,” Chester could not help saying.
“I guess not. I ain’t a fool. Let every tub stand on its own bottom, I say. But I won’t be too hard. Here’s twenty-five cents,” and Silas took a battered quarter from the money drawer.
“Take it and use it careful.”
“I think we will try to get along without it,” said Chester, with a curl of the lip. “I’m afraid you can’t afford it.”
“Do just as you like,” said Silas, putting back the money with a sigh of relief, “but don’t say I didn’t offer to do something for Walter.”
“No; I will tell him how much you offered to give.”
“That’s a queer boy,” said Mr. Tripp, as Chester left the store. “Seems to want me to pay all Walter Bruce’s expenses. What made him come to Wyncombe to get sick? He’d better have stayed where he lived, and then he’d have had a claim to go to the poorhouse. He can’t live on me, I tell him that. Them Rands are foolish to take him in. They’re as poor as poverty themselves, and now they’ve taken in a man who ain’t no claim on them. I expect they thought they’d get a good sum out of me for boardin’ him. There’s a great many onrasonable people in the world.”
“I will go and see Mr. Morris, the minister,” decided the perplexed Chester. “He will tell me what to do.”
Accordingly he called on the minister and unfolded the story to sympathetic ears.
“You did right, Chester,” said Mr. Morris. “The poor fellow was fortunate to fall into your hands. But won’t it be too much for your mother?”