“How much is the bill?” he asked.
“Ten dollars,” said the young man despondently.
“And will you give me fifty cents if I change it?”
“Well, I said I'd give fifty cents,” replied the young man gloomily, “and I will.”
“It's a bargain,” said Lemuel promptly, and he took from his pocket the two five-dollar notes that formed his store, and gave them, to the young man.
He looked at them critically. “How do I know they're good?” he asked. “You're a stranger to me, young feller, and how do I know you ain't tryin' to beat me?” He looked sternly at Lemuel, but here the mate interposed.
“How does he know that you ain't tryin' to beat him?” he asked contemptuously. “I never saw such a feller as you are! Here you make me run half over town to change that bill, and now when a gentleman offers to break it for you, you have to go and accuse him of tryin' to put off counterfeit money on you. If I was him I'd see you furder.”
“Oh, well, I don't want any words about it. Here, take your money,” said the young man. “As long as I said I'd do it, I'll do it. Here's your half a dollar.” He put it, with the bank-note, into Lemuel's hand, and rose briskly. “You stay here, Jimmy, till I come back. I won't be gone a minute.”
He walked down the mall, and went out of the gate on Tremont Street. Then the mate came to himself. “Why, I've let him go off with both them bills now, and he owes me one of 'em.” With that he rose from Lemuel's side and hurried after his vanishing comrade; before he was out of sight he had broken into a run.
Lemuel sat looking after them, his satisfaction in the affair alloyed by dislike of the haste with which it had been transacted. His rustic mind worked slowly; it was not wholly content even with a result in its own favour, where the process had been so rapid; he was scarcely able to fix the point at which the talk ceased to be a warning against beats and became his opportunity for speculation. He did not feel quite right at having taken the fellow's half-dollar; and yet a bargain was a bargain. Nevertheless, if the fellow wanted to rue it, Lemuel would give him fifteen minutes to come back and get his money; and he sat for that space of time where the others had left him. He was not going to be mean; and he might have waited a little longer if it had not been for the behaviour of two girls who came up and sat down on the same bench with him. They could not have been above fifteen or sixteen years old, and Lemuel thought they were very pretty, but they talked so, and laughed so loud, and scuffled with each other for the paper of chocolate which one of them took out of her pocket, that Lemuel, after first being abashed by the fact that they were city girls, became disgusted with them. He was a stickler for propriety of behaviour among girls; his mother had taught him to despise anything like carrying-on among them, and at twenty he was as severely virginal in his morality as if he had been twelve.