"It was nothing much to get excited about," I replied a little impatiently; "and it has passed now, anyway, like a winter snow in the city—slush, water, nothing!"
"But the principle! You forget the principle!" she remonstrated dryly.
"I know—and he's going to resign from the presidency—that ought to satisfy his principle—but we must keep him on the board."
"It was a judge, too! A sworn officer of the law!" Mrs. Dround interrupted, quoting demurely from Henry I's remarks about the injunction scandal.
"Very well, he can make over his stock to you, then! It won't trouble you, and you can draw the big dividends we are going to pay soon. I don't want him to get out now, when the fruit is almost ripe to shake."
"Is that the only reason?" Mrs. Dround asked quickly.
"Of course, we don't want his stock coming on the market in a big block. It would break us all up. And it might easily get into the wrong hands."
For Mr. Dround, in the brief interview that we had had on his return, had intimated his desire not only to withdraw from the presidency of the corporation, which had been merely a nominal office, but to dispose of his stock as soon as the agreement expired in the fall, suggesting that I had best find some friendly hands to take his big holding. In his gentlemanly way he had told me that he had had enough of me and was quite ready to snow me under, if it could be done in a polite and friendly fashion.
"So you want him to wait?" Mrs. Dround suggested indifferently.
"Yes, until I am ready!"