Jim took off his hat and passed his fingers through his hair.
“Lord! I didn’t know, Phil,––honest to goodness!––I didn’t know I had written so many.
“They say these six, with a little toning up in language, a little toning down in cold-blooded murder and exclamatory remarks, would make ideal, cloth-bound books for 361 boys, for Sunday School prizes and junior libraries. They offer me royalties on each if I execute the work for them under my real name.”
“Aren’t you going to take it on? I really think you should. It would give you a certain amount of literary permanency. I’ve told you all along that you ought to be doing nobler work in that line than ten-cent ‘hair-raisers.’”
“Me? No, thanks! Captain Mayne Plunkett is as dead a deader as Aunt Christina. Requiescat in pace.”
He waved his hand in dismissal of the subject.
“‘On with the dance––let joy be unconfined.’”
“Phil,” said Jim seriously, half an hour afterwards, “Royce Pederstone is going to come a terrible cropper over this business. He is mortgaged up to the neck and, singly or with some of the political gang, he is in almost every realty proposition we hear of.”
“I know it. I’ve tried my best to make him see it, but he says if he doesn’t have faith in the Valley, who will.”
“But this isn’t a question of faith;––it is a shortage of money and a tightening up of foreign capital chiefly.”