He paid no attention.
Upon this Silverthorn fired up.
“Hullo, Bill, this won’t do! Do you suppose I’m going to let our pet arrangement drop that way and leave you to be so misconstrued? Come back here and sit down.” (Vibbard was already at the door.) “As for your getting any advantage out of this, is it likely? Why, you are well off now, to begin with; that is, your father is; and I am poor, downright poor—Ferguson must have seen that.”
Here was a surprise! The dreamy youth was proving himself much more sensible than the beefy and practical one. Vibbard, however, seemed to enjoy being admonished by Silverthorn, and resumed his seat quite meekly. To me, in my balancing frame of mind, it occurred that one might go farther than Silverthorn had done, in saying that any advantage to Vibbard was very improbable; one might assume that it was surely Silverthorn who would reap the profit. But I decided not to disturb the already troubled waters any more.
Silverthorn, however, expressed this idea: “You’ll be thinking,” he said to me, with a smile, “that I am going to get the upper hand in this bargain; and I know there seems a greater chance of it. But then I have hopes—I—” The dreamy look, which I have described by the simile of a haze, gathered and increased on his fair ingenuous young face, and his eyes quite ignored me for a moment, being fixed on some imaginary outlook very entrancing to him, until he recalled his flagging voice, to add: “Well, I don’t know that I can put it before you, but there are possibilities which may make a great difference in my fortunes within a few years.”
I fancied that Vibbard gave me a quick, confidential glance, as much as to say, “Don’t disturb that idea. Let him think so.” But the next moment his features were as inert as ever.
It turned out, on inquiry, that only Vibbard was of age; his friend being quick in study, had entered college early, and nearly two years stood between him and his majority; so that, if their contract was to be binding, they would have to defer it for that length of time. I was prepared for their disappointment; but Silverthorn, after an instant’s reflection, seemed quite satisfied. As they were going, he hurried back, leaving his friend out of ear-shot, and explained himself,—
“You see, Vibbard has an idea that I shall never succeed in life,—financially, that is,—and so he wants to fasten this agreement on me, to prevent pride or anything making me back out, you know, by and by. But I like all the better to have it left just as it is for a while, so that if we should ever put it on paper he needn’t feel that he had hurried into the thing too rashly.”
“I understand,” I replied; and I pressed his hand warmly, for his frankness and genuineness had pleased me.
When they were gone, I pondered several minutes on the novelty and boyish naïveté of the whole proceeding, and found myself a good deal refreshed by the sincerity of the two young fellows and their fine confidence in the perfectibility of the future. It seemed to me, the more I thought of it, that I could hold on to this scheme of theirs as a help to myself in retaining a healthy freshness of spirit. “At any rate,” I said, “I won’t allow myself to go adrift into cynicism as long as they keep faith with their ideal.”