“From a batty old sailor man who thought I had done him some good turns,” answered Dan. “Where he got it he didn’t say. I don’t think he could remember.”
And Dan, whose only safe deposit for boyish treasures was his jacket pocket, pulled out the gift that Freddy had refused, and showed it to this new acquaintance, who, holding it off in his horny hand, blinked at it with practised eye.
“Portugee or Spanish, I don’t know which it says on that thar rim. Thar ain’t much of it silver. I’d have to rub it up to be sure of the rest. Date, well as I can make out, it’s 1850.”
“It is,” said Dan. “I made that much out myself.”
Old Jonah shook his head.
“Ain’t far enough back. Takes a good hundred years to make an antique. Still, you can’t tell. The ways of these great folks are queer. Last week I sold for five dollars a bureau that I was thinking of splitting up into firewood; and the woman was as tickled as if she had found a purse of money. Said it was Louey Kans. Who or what she was I don’t know; mebbe some kin of hers. I showed her the break plain, for I ain’t no robber; but she said that didn’t count a mite,—that she could have a new glass put in for ten dollars. Ten dollars! Wal, thar ain’t no telling about rich folks’ freaks and foolishness; so I can’t say nothing about that thar medal. It ain’t the kind of thing I’d want to gamble on. But if you’d like to leave it here on show. I’ll take care of it, I promise you; and mebbe some one may come along and take a notion to it.”
“Oh, what’s the good?” said Dan, hesitating.
“Dan, do—do!” pleaded Freddy, who saw a chance for the vacation pocket money his chum so sorely lacked. “You might get twenty-five dollars for it, Dan.”
“He might,” said old Jonah; “and then again he mightn’t, sonny. I ain’t promising any more big deals like them I told you about. But you can’t ever tell in this here junk business whar or when luck will strike you. It goes hard agin my old woman to hev all this here dust and cobwebs. She has got as tidy a house as you’d ask to see just around the corner,—flower garden in front, and everything shiny. But if I’d let her in here with a bucket and broom she’d ruin my business forever. It’s the dust and the rust and the cobwebs that runs Jonah’s junk-shop. But it’s fair and square. I put down in writing all folks give me to sell, and sign my name to it. If you don’t gain nothing, you don’t lose nothing.”
Dan was thinking fast. Twenty-five dollars,—twenty-five dollars! There was only a chance, it is true; and a very slim chance at that. But what would twenty-five dollars mean to him, to Aunt Winnie? For surely and steadily, in the long, pleasant summer days, in the starlit watches of the night, his resolution was growing: he must live and work for Aunt Winnie; he could not leave her gentle heart to break in its loneliness, while he climbed to heights beyond her reach; he could not let her die, while he dreamed of a future she would never see. Being only a boy, Dan did not put the case in just such words. He only felt with a fierce determination that, in spite of the dull pain in his heart at the thought, he must give up St. Andrew’s when this brief seaside holiday was past, and work for Aunt Winnie. And a little ready cash to make a new start in Mulligan’s upper rooms would help matters immensely. Just now he had not money enough for a fire in the rusty little stove, or to move Aunt Winnie and her old horsehair trunk from the Little Sisters.