“You are crazy, Paley! You will run yourself out in a couple of years, at this rate. Eight hundred dollars! When I was married I didn’t spend a hundred dollars on my house. Paley, I will give you three days to pay this note. If you don’t do it in that time, I shall do the next thing.”
“What’s the next thing?” I asked, indignantly.
“I’ll trustee your salary!”
“You needn’t trouble yourself about the little sum I owe you; I will pay you,” I replied, rising and walking towards the door. “The next time I have occasion to ask a favor, I shall not go to a relation.”
Doubtless he regarded this as a very savage threat, though perhaps he did not think its execution involved any great hardship on his own part. I walked out of the insurance office with a degree of dignity and self-possession which would have been creditable in a bank president. My uncle must be paid. There was no doubt of that. I would not be thorned by him for all the money in the world, for he was a very uncomfortable sort of man to a debtor, and very obstinately insisted on collecting his dues.
It was patent to me that some one had been talking to Captain Halliard. Perhaps that mischievous stable-keeper had been in communication with him; and it was possible that my friend Buckleton had mentioned the trivial circumstance that I owed him eight hundred dollars. It was not impossible that Mr. Bristlebach and my uncle had been discussing my affairs. They were intimate acquaintances, and the captain did business at the Forty-ninth.
Tom Flynn.
I must pay Captain Halliard, or there would be a tempest about me at once. Not that he would trustee my salary, or anything of that kind; for this was only a hint that he would mention the matter to the president of our bank. I must pay him, but how to do so, was a matter about which I could not venture an opinion. I had little money, and I had already bled my friends as much as it was prudent to bleed them. I must “raise the wind,” or go under. I walked up State Street, trying to think who should suffer next for my sins, when I met Tom Flynn. We never passed each other without stopping to speak, though we stood side by side in the bank during business hours. I saw that he looked embarrassed, and it flashed upon my mind before he opened his mouth that he wanted his money, and that he had made up his mind to ask me for it. I did not regard it as proper for him to do so.
“Tom, I’m glad to see you,” I began. “I wanted to meet you.”