“You’re forgetting the Bulgarian element,” he continued, his animation just as eager as before. “The Slavs never forget what they owe to one another.”
Here Ellesworth drank a sip of tea and then said quietly, “Could you make it ten till Saturday at twelve?”
I looked at him more closely. I noticed now his frayed cuffs and the dinginess of his over-brushed clothes. Not even the magnetism of his spectacles could conceal it. Perhaps I had been forgetting something, whether the Bulgarian element or not.
I compromised at ten dollars till Saturday.
“The Slav,” said Ellesworth, as he pocketed the money, “is peculiar. He never forgets.”
“What are you doing now?” I asked him. “Are you still in insurance?” I had a vague recollection of him as employed in that business.
“No,” he answered. “I gave it up. I didn’t like the outlook. It was too narrow. The atmosphere cramped me. I want,” he said, “a bigger horizon.”
“Quite so,” I answered quietly. I had known men before who had lost their jobs. It is generally the cramping of the atmosphere that does it. Some of them can use up a tremendous lot of horizon.
“At present,” Ellesworth went on, “I am in finance. I’m promoting companies.”
“Oh, yes,” I said. I had seen companies promoted before.