“And how else did you think I was going to put the case, as you call it?” asked the Squire, indignantly.
“Commercially, of course: as a pure matter of business between one man and another.”
“Oh, ho that’s it, is it?” said the Squire, grimly.
“That’s just it, Mr. Culpepper.”
“Then friendship in such a case as this counts for nothing, and my I.O.U. might just as well never be written.”
“Let us be candid with each other,” said the banker, blandly. “You want the loan of a very considerable sum of money. Now, however much inclined I might be to lend you the amount out of my own private coffers, you will believe me when I say that I am not in a position to do so. I have no such amount of available capital in hand at present. But if you were to come to me with a good negotiable security, I could at once put you into the proper channel for obtaining what you want. A mortgage, for instance. What could be better than that? The estate, so far as I know, is unencumbered, and the sum you need could easily be raised on it on very easy terms.”
“I took an oath to my father on his deathbed that I would never raise a penny by mortgage on Pincote, and I never will.”
“If that is the case,” said the banker, with a slight shrug of the shoulders, “I am afraid that I hardly see in what way I can be of service to you.” He coughed, and then he looked at his watch, an action which Mr. Culpepper did not fail to note and resent in his own mind.
“I am sorry I came,” he said, bitterly. “It seems to have been only a waste of your time and mine.”
“Don’t speak of it,” said the banker, with his little business laugh. “In any case, you have learned one of the first and simplest lessons of commercial ethics.”