The two had halted near the water. Just beyond their feet, in a little curve of the shore, the water suddenly deepened. The boys of the neighborhood called it the “Pool,” and sometimes used it as a bathing tub.
“There are too many people that are against us ever to expect much, Chauncy.”
“What do you mean, uncle?”
“Well,” said Baggs, dropping his voice and moving his head nearer to Chauncy’s ear as if afraid that somebody might hear him, “there is that Walter Plympton. I think he knows more than is good for our business. He must somehow be forced out of the neighborhood. As I understand it, he will not be at the station long, but he must not stay here at all. I will get his old booby uncle to send him home; and I want you, nephew” (he always said this when he wished to be affectionate, and sincerely affectionate he never was), “I want you, nephew, to say round here and there, you know, that you—don’t think he is much of a feller—indeed you know of his bein’—bein’—”
“Being what, uncle?” asked Chauncy eying sharply his relative.
“Well, if you don’t just know, get up something. Well—”
“Well, now, at the ’cademy, wasn’t there some scrape, wasn’t there drinkin’, wasn’t there—”
Chauncy was flippant and conceited and brassy, and he had veneered certain of his uncle’s tricks of trade with the name “business methods,” and had practiced them as the customary thing among shrewd, enterprising men, and therefore permissible. Chauncy was not base enough to spatter with lies the character of one whom he knew to be trustworthy. He had rather avoided Walter since the boat–race, but he could not deliberately go to work to ruin his character. Chauncy now mildly demurred; but at the same time, he lifted his cap and stroked those formidable locks of hair, and that meant a pugnacious attitude, a very decided, “I won’t.”
“Oh, I don’t believe I would, uncle,” said Chauncy. “I don’t really know anything against Walter. He’s a sort of a Puritan, and thinks considerable of Walter Plympton; but we all of us have a pretty good idea of ourselves. Guess I wouldn’t,” and he added a title sometimes used among the great man’s relatives, “Uncle Bezzie.”