“I am quite aware that the mortgage is for a thousand only,” the doctor said, and yet without the slightest meaning of apology, “but I consider when it comes to relinquishing it that it is worth the additional five hundred. I must be just to myself. Then, too, Mr. Edwards owed me a half-year's interest. The fifteen hundred would cover that, of course.”
“You won't take any less?”
“Not a dollar.”
Squire Eben hesitated a second. “You know, I own that strip of land on the Dale road, on the other side of the brook,” he said.
The doctor nodded, still with his eyes keenly intent.
“There are three good house-lots; that house of the Edwardses is old and out of repair. You'll have to spend considerable on it to rent it. My three lots are equal to that one house, and suppose we exchange. You take that land, and I take the mortgage on the Edwards place.”
“Do you know what you are talking about?” Doctor Prescott said, sharply; for this plain proposition that he overreach the other aroused him to a show of fairness.
Squire Merritt laughed. “Oh, I know you'll get the best of the bargain,” he returned.
Then the doctor waxed suspicious. This readiness to take the worst of a bargain while perfectly cognizant of it puzzled him. He wondered if perchance this easy-going, card-playing, fishing Squire had, after all, some axe of policy to grind. “What do you expect to make out of it?” he asked, bluntly.
“Nothing. I am not even sure that I have any active hope of a higher rate of interest in the other world for it. I am not as sound in the doctrines as you, doctor.” Squire Eben laughed, but the other turned on him sternly.