He had gin him a twenty dollar gold piece, for I see it.
“I’ll give ’em all I’ve got—I’ll work for that poor woman who lost her little boy—I’ll work for her and help her.”
“Who’ll work for me?” sez Martin. “You’re to be my partner, my boy; remember that. You’re my little partner now—half of all I own belongs to you.”
“And I will give it all to them,” sez Adrian.
But Martin went right on—“You are to be president of this company when I am an old man; you’re to work for me.”
“But I’ll work for those poor people, papa,” sez Adrian, and as he said this he looked way off through his father’s face, as he sot by the open window, to some distance beyend him. And his eyes, jest the color of that June sky, looked big and luminous.
“I’ll work for them, papa,” and as he spoke a sudden thrill, some like electricity, only more riz up like, shot through my soul, a sudden and deep conviction that he would work for ’em—that he would in some way redeem the old Smith name from the ojium attachin’ to it now as a owner of them Herod’s Chariots and a Massacreer of Innocents. But to resoom.
All the next day Adrian kep’ talkin’ about it, how he wuz goin’ to be his papa’s pardner, and how he wuz a-goin’ to work for poor folks who had lost their little children, and wanted so many things.
And the questions he asked me about ’em, and about poor folks, though wearisome to the flesh, wuz agreeable to the sperit.
Wall, Martin called him so much from day to day—“My little partner,” that we all got into the habit on’t, and called him so through the day.