“My father chargeth me to say he cannot honorably require you to pay it all at this time, and therefore only prayeth you—”
I paid no more heed than if it were the idle breeze, but, with an air of indifference amounting almost to weariness, got out my money and tossed four dollars on to the table. Ah, you should have seen them stare!
The clerk was astonished and charmed. He asked me to retain one of the dollars as security, until he could go to town and—I interrupted:
“What, and fetch back nine cents? Nonsense! Take the whole. Keep the change.”
There was an amazed murmur to this effect:
“Verily this being is made of money! He throweth it away even as if it were dirt.”
The blacksmith was a crushed man.
The clerk took his money and reeled away drunk with fortune. I said to Marco and his wife:
“Good folk, here is a little trifle for you”—handing the miller-guns as if it were a matter of no consequence, though each of them contained fifteen cents in solid cash; and while the poor creatures went to pieces with astonishment and gratitude, I turned to the others and said as calmly as one would ask the time of day:
“Well, if we are all ready, I judge the dinner is. Come, fall to.”