The old man seemed impressed by this masterly argument.
“You needn’t be afraid I won’t come,” urged Wilfred. “I’ll come with a buggy and all.”
“At ten o’clock?” said the old man.
“Earlier than that if you say.”
“If you say you’ll come and you don’t, I got to wait a year for examination.”
“Yes, but didn’t you hear me say I will come?”
“I’ll be lookin’ for you,” said the old man. Wilfred watched him totter over to a calendar and laboriously pick out the twenty-fifth of the month. Then, with shaking hand he marked a cross upon the figures with a lead pencil. The shrewd, kindly eyes of Lincoln seemed to look straight at Wilfred as if to say, “Now you’re in for it.”
CHAPTER XXI
A BARGAIN
Wilfred was not the first nor the last guest at Temple Camp to be a plunger in the seething metropolis of Terryville. Many were the empty pockets that Main Street had to answer for. But he had done worse (or better) than squander his little fortune in riotous living; he had pledged himself to do something for which sufficient funds might not be available.
He was glad that old Pop Winters was prejudiced against automobiles, because he himself was prejudiced against the taxi rates for these. He realized that he was doing good turns on a rather dangerous margin. Suppose he could not get a horse and buggy for five dollars? No incentive could induce him to borrow money; it was not in the Cowell blood to do that. Well, he was in for it, and he would see....