"Don't make me out much of a fellow, does it?"
"I guess it was my fault a good deal; but if you want the truth, you haven't been much of anything up to date. Now, have you?"
"Umm! Disko thinks . . . Say, what d'you reckon it's cost you to raise me from the start—first, last and all over?"
Cheyne smiled. "I've never kept track, but I should estimate, in dollars and cents, nearer fifty than forty thousand; maybe sixty. The young generation comes high. It has to have things, and it tires of 'em, and—the old man foots the bill."
Harvey whistled, but at heart he was rather pleased to think that his upbringing had cost so much. "And all that's sunk capital, isn't it?"
"Invested, Harve. Invested, I hope."
"Making it only thirty thousand, the thirty I've earned is about ten cents on the hundred. That's a mighty poor catch." Harvey wagged his head solemnly.
Cheyne laughed till he nearly fell off the pile into the water.
"Disko has got a heap more than that out of Dan since he was ten; and Dan's at school half the year, too."
"Oh, that's what you're after, is it?"