"Your apprehensions are as absurd as they are groundless, my dear boy. We could cash checks for any reasonable sum in this caravanserai merely on our appearance as men of education and property. Even in stolen clothes you look like a capitalist."
Two men came into the garden and seated themselves at a table on the other side of a screen of shrubbery. They ordered coffee and one of them remarked upon the recent prevalence of crime in New England.
"A thief was shot at Bailey Harbor night before last and there seems to be a band of crooks operating all along the coast."
"We need a better type of men in Congress," said the Governor in a loud tone, with a wink at Archie. "There's a steady deterioration in the quality of our representatives in both houses."
"You are right," Archie responded, remembering with a twinge of conscience his congressman brother-in-law.
The Governor nodded to Archie to keep on talking, while he played the rôle of eavesdropper.
"You oughtn't to have carried that cash up here," came in a low tone from the hedge. "The old man is a fool or he wouldn't have suggested such a thing."
"Well, he wrote that he was coming here to spend a week and in his characteristic fashion said if I wanted his stock I could bring the currency here and close the transaction. The Congdons are all a lot of cranks, you know. This old curmudgeon carries a small fortune around with him all the time, and never accepts a check in any transaction."
The Governor grew more eloquent in his attempt to convince Archie of the decadence of American statesmanship, while their unseen neighbors, feeling themselves secure, continued their discussion of the errand that had brought them to Cornford.
"You're paying the old skunk a big price for his shares!"