“Yes,” replied Kinney, looking at Bartley for his approval, “and I've always thought that, if I ever got run clean ashore, high and dry, I'd make a stagger to write it out and do something with it. Do you suppose I could?”
“I promise to take it for the Sunday edition of the Chronicle Abstract, whenever you get it ready,” said Ricker.
Bartley laid his hand on his friend's arm. “It's bought up, old fellow. That narrative—'Confessions of an Average American'—belongs to the Events.”
They had their laugh at this, and then Ricker said to Kinney: “But look here, my friend! What's to prevent our interviewing you on this little personal history of yours, and using your material any way we like? It seems to me that you've put your head in the lion's mouth.”
“Oh, I'm amongst gentlemen,” said Kinney, with an innocent swagger. “I understand that.”
“Well, I don't know about it,” said Ricker. “Hubbard, here, is used to all sorts of hard names; but I've never had that epithet applied to me before.”
Kinney doubled himself up over the side of his chair in recognition of Ricker's joke; and when Bartley rose and asked him if he would come into the parlor and have a cigar, he said, with a wink, no, he guessed he would stay with the ladies. He waited with great mystery till the folding-doors were closed, and Bartley had stopped peeping through the crevice between them, and then he began to disengage from his watch-chain the golden nugget, shaped to a rude sphere, which hung there. This done, he asked if he might put it on the little necklace—a christening gift from Mrs. Halleck—which the baby had on, to see how it looked. It looked very well, like an old Roman bolla, though neither Kinney nor Marcia knew it. “Guess we'll let it stay there,” he suggested, timidly.
“Mr. Kinney!” cried Marcia, in amaze, “I can't let you!”
“Oh, do now, ma'am!” pleaded the big fellow, simply. “If you knew how much good it does me, you would. Why, it's been like heaven to me to get into such a home as this for a day,—it has indeed.”
“Like heaven?” said Marcia, turning pale. “Oh, my!”