"So this is your place of business?" said Bert, glancing about the plain office room. "What do you do here?"
"I buy real estate, sometimes—sell—rent—and so forth."
"Who for?" asked Bert.
"For myself," said the old gentleman, with a smile.
Bert started, perfectly aghast, at this situation. This, then, was the man whom he had invited to dinner and treated so patronizingly the preceding Thursday!
"I—I—I thought—you were a poor man!"
"I am a poor man," said Mr. Crooker, locking his safe. "Money doesn't make a man rich. I've money enough. I own houses in the city. They give me something to think of, and so keep me alive. I had truer riches once, but I lost them long ago."
From the way the old man's voice trembled and eyes glistened, Bert thought he must have meant by these riches, the friends he had lost, wife and children, perhaps.