The Colonel, with great good nature, placed a hand lovingly upon the shoulder of the other.
“Your conundrum is easy enough,” replied the young man nonchalantly. “You didn’t want to let me have the money, that was all.”
“Certainly I didn’t; certainly I didn’t; and you should be very thankful to me that I refused. I knew Wall Street a great deal better than you did, my dear fellow, and that money would just have followed the rest into the pit.”
“I quite believe you.”
“Yes; but you didn’t believe me then; and you left my house in a huff, without ever giving me a chance to make my position clear.”
“If you had been anxious to make it clear, Colonel, there was plenty of time to do it in. That was some years ago, and a letter to Naples costs only five cents.”
“True, true,” cried the Colonel, in the bluff manner of an honest but misunderstood man. “I might have expended the five cents, as you say, if I had known your address, but you had got on your high horse, and had said things which a younger man should have hesitated before applying to his elder. Now, I don’t pretend to be any better than my fellows, and I admit I was offended. Such usage coming from you, John, hurt me, I confess.”
The American Consul, finding himself an unneeded third in what was drifting into a private discussion, pushed back his chair and rose to his feet.
“I must bid you good-night, Steele,” he said; “I have another appointment. I shall see you at the office tomorrow, I suppose?”
“Don’t go, Stokes. The Colonel and I have nothing confidential to discuss,” returned his friend, while the Colonel sat silent, as if he thought this was not a true statement of the case. The Consul, however, persisted in his withdrawal, and Colonel Beck heaved a sigh of relief as he watched him disappear.