The waiter smiled, showed them to the best room in the house, and retired.
“Now let us talk,” said Hubert, “I am dying to tell you how rich you are, and scold you for not letting me keep your stock longer and making you richer. Why were you so anxious to sell? The stock kept rising steadily. I was a ‘bull’ all the time. There was a slight break once—only once. Some fellows wanted to pull the stock down, and got a few ‘bears’ to work with them. It lowered a little, but only a few of the heavy holders had any fear, and it soon recovered, shooting up higher than ever. I got your order to sell about that time, and did so, but I assure you my heart ached when I did it.”
“I wrote you immediately after that, it was only the first hundred shares I wanted sold.”
“Yes, but that letter I got three days after I had sold all. I almost cried like a girl, with disappointment, when you wrote that I was to send you only $6000. Now, you could have made a whole million with your thousand shares.”
“A whole million?”
“Most assuredly. Look at yesterday's quotations, and the stock is still rising.”
“Truly,” said Clarence, reading the stock report; “the last paper I saw was dated six days ago. But even then ‘Crown Point’ was still very high.”
“And so it was, but it is very disappointing to get one-half of a million when you might as well get a whole million. I shall never cease scolding you for it.”
“Well, I'll bear the scolding patiently, considering that it was to avoid scoldings that I gave you the order to sell.”
“To avoid scolding? How so? From whom?”