“Yes, I flatter myself that I am a fair manager. I think it my duty to be.”
“What a tiresome woman!” thought Benton. “I hate people who are always talking about duty.”
This was not surprising, for Benton concerned himself very little about duty in his own case.
When he left the table, he said to himself, “It seems pretty certain that Grant and Cooper haven’t parted with any of their gold-dust. The question is, where do they keep it?”
That day Benton strayed into a restaurant and boarding-house in the village, kept by a man named Hardy, and learned incidentally that he wanted to sell out.
“What do you want to sell out for?” asked Benton.
“I have got tired of the place. It is too quiet for me. I want to go to San Francisco. There’s more life there, and more money can always be made in a city like that.”
“How has the restaurant been paying?” questioned Benton.
“I can’t complain of it. It has paid me about forty dollars a week, net; perhaps a little more.”
“I have been in the restaurant business myself,” continued Albert.