"I do not wish to hurry you unduly. I have a letter to write, which will take me a few minutes. Think the matter over until I have finished."
"Thank you. I will. But since I have imposed upon your good nature so far, do me one more kindness, Mr. Chelm. What is your own opinion in this matter? Do you advise me to accept?"
I listened eagerly for his reply. It was in his power to spoil all.
"Really, I feel embarrassed how to answer. As I have already implied to you, the proposition strikes me, as a lawyer, as being the most preposterous piece of extravagance I ever heard suggested. I will tell you frankly that I tried my utmost to dissuade my client from making it. It is thoroughly unbusiness-like and absurd. That is my view of the matter from a professional standpoint."
"I see," said Mr. Prime.
"But," continued Mr. Chelm,—and here he stopped and gave an amused chuckle,—"it is a rare chance for a young man, a rare chance. My client will never mind the loss of the money, and would feel genuine disappointment, I know, if you were to decline. This being the case, and feeling as I do that you are in earnest in your desire to succeed despite your aristocratic tendencies, I am tempted on the whole to urge you to accept the good fortune which is thrust upon you. It is for my client's sake as much as for your own that I advise this, for I can see that she has set her heart—"
He stopped short. There was a dead pause, and I felt the blood rush to my cheeks.
"Well!" he exclaimed, "I have let the cat out of the bag with a vengeance this time. A lawyer, too. Pshaw! It is too bad!"
"That settles it," said Mr. Prime, quietly; "I cannot accept now at any rate. It would not be fair to your client."
"Not accept? Of course you will accept. Nonsense, nonsense! It is all my fault, and you shall have the money now if I have to pay it out of my own pocket. Besides," said Mr. Chelm with voluble eagerness, "there is very little harm done after all; and to prevent misunderstanding, I may as well make a clean breast of it. My client is an eccentric maiden-lady of sixty-five, with a lot of distant relatives who bother her life out while waiting for her to die. I am her only intimate friend, but even I cannot prevent her from doing all sorts of queer things in her taste for sentimentality. You see, poor woman, when she was very young she had a lover of just about your age (she wears his portrait perpetually in a locket about her neck), who died. He was in business, and doing very well. Several times already, on this account, she has helped young men who were in straits; and when I told her your story, and what you were ambitious to do, she clapped her withered old hands together and said, 'I will give him a chance, Mr. Chelm, I will give him a chance! He reminds me of my Tom.' And that is how it came to pass. There is the long-and-short of the matter. Accept? To be sure you will accept. It is all my fault. I will make it right with her. It would break her heart if you did not. So, no more words about it. I have all the necessary papers ready."