"That's all very fine," rejoined Mr. Glady, a little timid about what he wished to say, yet resolved to get it out; "that's all very fine in theory—but a fellow only needs to look around to see it makes quite a bit o' difference just the same," he affirmed, casting an appraising glance around the richly furnished room. "Money makes the mare go, all right."
"Mebbe it does," said David, a far-off look in his eyes. "I wisht you'd both have some more crackers an' prunes; mebbe it does, but it don't make her go very far in—in where your feelin's is, I mean. There's far more important things than for the mare to get a gait on. Look at that Standard-oil fellow, out there in Cleveland, that's got more millions than he has hairs. Well, money made the mare go—but if it'd make the hair stay, I reckon he'd like it better. They say there ain't a hair between his head an' heaven. He could drop a million apiece on his friends, an' then have millions left; but they say he's clean forgot how to chaw—if he takes anythin' stronger'n Nestle's food it acts on him like dynamite, an' then he boosts up the price o' oil—he does it kind of unconscious like—when he's writhin'. I wouldn't board with him for a month if he gave me the run of his vault. But there's the fellow that drives his horses; he sets down to his breakfast at six o'clock—with his hair every way for Sunday—an' he eats with his knife an' drinks out of his saucer. An' when all his children thinks he's done, he says: 'Pass me them cucumber pickles—an' another hunk o' lemon pie,'—so you see things is divided up pretty even after all. I believe luck comes to lots o' men, of course—but one of its hands is most gen'rally always as empty as a last year's nest—you can't have everything," concluded David, looking first at the men's plates and then down at the crackers and prunes.
"But one handful's a heap," suggested Mr. Glady, lifting the keel of a ruined herring to his lips.
"'Tain't as much as you think for," retorted the host. "It don't touch the sore spot at all. If a fellow's got a good deal of th' almighty needful, as they call it, it may make his surroundin's a little more—a little more ornamentorious," he declared, wrestling with the word. "But there ain't nothin' more to it than that. Take me, if you like; I've got more than lots o' fellows—or used to have, anyway. But the difference is mostly ornament; a few more things like that there statute—or is it a statue?—I can't never tell them two apart; that there statute of the hamstrung lady you run up agin in the sittin'-room. But I never eat only one herrin' at a time, an' I jest sleep on one pillow at a time—an' if I have the colic I jest cuss an' howl the same as some weary Willie that a woman gives one of her own pies to, an' he eats all the undercrust. I'm afeard you don't like our humble fare," he digressed in a rather plaintive voice; "won't you have some more crackers an' prunes between you—they'll never get past the kitchen, anyhow."
The horny-handed guests, declining the oft-pressed hospitality, began about this time to look a little uneasily at each other; visions of their original errand were troubling them some. Finally Mr. Hunter nodded very decidedly to his colleague, whereat Mr. Glady again produced his trusty handkerchief, and, after he had tooted his disquietude into its sympathetic bosom, cleared his throat with a sound that suggested the dredging of a harbour, and began:
"Me and Mr. Hunter's got a commission, Mr. Borland. We're appointed to—to confer with you about, about the interests of the men, so to speak; about a raise—that is, about a more fairer distribution of the product of our united industry, as it were," he went on, serenely quoting without acknowledgment from the flowing stanzas of a gifted agitator whose mission had been completed but a week before.
"I'm terrible glad you brought that up," David responded enthusiastically. "I hated to mention it myself; but I've been wonderin' lately about a little scheme. D'ye think the men would be willin' to kind of enter into a bargain for gettin' a certain per cent. of the profits an'——"
"I'd stake my life they would," Mr. Hunter broke in fervidly. "Of course, we haven't no authority on that point, but I'm sure they'd be willin'—a more agreeable lot of men you never seen, Mr. Borland. Don't you think so, Tom?" he appealed to the approving Glady. The latter was framing an ardent endorsement—but David went on:
"An' of course I'd expect them to enjoy the losses along with us too—then we'd all have the same kind o' feelin's all the time, like what becometh brethren. An' we're havin' a lot o' the last kind these days. What do you think, Mr. Glady?"
Mr. Glady was sadly at a loss; with a kind of muscular spasm he seized his cup and held it out towards David; "I think I'll take another cup o' tea," he said vacantly.