“You sort o' believed in Fred all along, Toby,” the banker said, tentatively—“that is, you used to talk him up to some extent.”
“I thought he was in earnest about what he wrote in that last good-bye letter, Mr. Walton. It made a deep impression on me. It sounded perfectly straight. And awhile back, when his other letter came, bringing all that cash, I was more sure than ever. Even when you said you believed it was a trick, somehow I couldn't exactly look at it that way.”
“Well, see if you can locate this Whipple,” Walton said, and, turning off, he trudged heavily homeward through the gathering shadows.
He was on his way back to the bank about nine o'clock when he saw Toby coming toward him. The clerk was walking rapidly, swinging his long arms to and fro like pendulums.
“Well, well?” Walton exclaimed, as they met face to face on the sidewalk in the flare of a gas-light.
“I have found him!” Toby chuckled. “There is no mistake. Stephen Whipple is a whopping big wholesale grocer at Gate City, Oklahoma. He's rated at over a million, with credit at the top notch.”
“You don't say!” A negro laborer with a bag of flour on his shoulder was passing close by, and Walton laid his hand warmingly on the arm of his clerk and drew him slowly along.
“You don't say!” he repeated, under his breath, as he clutched Toby's thin arm, “and I talked to him like a dog—like a hound-dog. I did that, when he could buy and sell me over and over. I sneered at him, and just as good as called him a thief, when he was right then befriending the son I'd cast off. Say, Toby, you've got a sight more sense than I have; what do you think I ought to do about it?”
“I really don't know, Mr. Walton,” Toby replied, awkwardly. “Maybe it would be a good idea for you to go out there. From the way Fred wrote, it stands to reason he'd be glad to see you, anyway, and—”
“I couldn't do that, Toby,” Walton said, under his breath. “After the stand I took and have held all these years, I couldn't go running after him. I could do some things, but I couldn't do that. Besides, you see, Whipple would know we'd looked up his standing, and think I'd come because he was rich. But, say, I have an idea, Toby. Don't you think you could get on the train and go out there and take a look around?”