Then it was just as Job Perkins had told me! The rivalry between the Barney twins was fostered by their rich uncle. I had no comment to make—it wasn’t my place. But Mr. Barney seemed to wish to talk to somebody, and perhaps because I was so near his own age (he could not have been twenty-three yet) and came from people who were more like his own class, he warmed toward me for the moment. Perhaps, too, I am a sympathetic listener.
“Alf and I,” said Mr. Barney, thoughtfully, “have always been more than brothers. We’ve been friends. There’s a difference. We understand each other fully—or always have until now. I never had any other chum, nor did he. We have been just as close to each other all our lives as the day we were born.
“I guess we had to be,” he added, thoughtfully. “There wasn’t anybody else for us to get close to. Our mother died soon after we were born. Father was lost in that old leaky bucket belonging to the firm, the Timothy K.—named after T. K. Knight, who used to be head of Barney, Blakesley & Knight before Uncle Jothan worked up in the firm.
“And that’s what makes the old man so crazy now. He wants a Barney to take his place so that another Knight won’t boss things. He’s nutty on it—that’s what he is!
“Uncle Jothan has had the care of us since we were small, you see. It’s nothing to his credit, however. Father left some property—sufficient to give Alf and me our education and set us out into the world with a little something to rattle in our pants’ pockets besides a bunch of keys!
“Old Uncle Jothan tried to set us boys at each other long ago. He tried his best to set one off against the other—to make Alf sore on me, or me sore on Alf. We didn’t see what he was getting at, at first.
“But he didn’t succeed very well. He made his favor, and his money, and his influence an object for us to struggle for. As it happened, we just wouldn’t struggle. We would not be rivals. What one had, t’other had. And that satisfied us—until last year,” and Mr. Barney shook his head dolefully.
“When we got our tickets the old man was crazy to find out if one of us passed better than another. We were about equal, I reckon. What one knows about seamanship, the other knows. In navigation I’m sure we stood equal.
“That didn’t satisfy Uncle Jothan. The last day we saw Baltimore he had us to breakfast with him. He was more ornery that morning than ever before.
“‘You two boys make me sick!’ he said to us. ‘I believe you try your blamedest to keep even in everything.’