"Certainly not!"
"Well, as I say, Ichabod Bunce is as close and 'cute in his dealings as any man in all Connecticut, and that's no little to say, I'm sartin. He's got the trick, if anybody's got it, of knowing how to make your pocket his, and squaring all things coming in by double multiplication. If he puts a shilling down, it's sure to stick to another; and if he picks one up, it never comes by itself—there's always sure to be two on 'em."
"A choice faculty for a tradesman."
"You've said it."
"Just the man for business, I take it."
"Jest so; you're right there, Master Colleton—there's no mistake about that. Well, as I tell'd you now, though he's my own brother, I have to keep a raal sharp look out over him in all our dealings. If he says two and two makes four, I sets to calkilate, for when he says so, I'm sure there's something wrong in the calkilation; and tho' to be sure I do know, when the thing stands by itself, that two and two does make four; yet, somehow, whenever he says it, I begin to think it not altogether so sartain. Ah, he's a main hand for trade, and there's no knowing when he'll come over you."
"But, Bunce, without making morals a party to this question, as you are in copartnership with your brother, you should rather rejoice that he possesses so happy a faculty; it certainly should not be a matter of regret with you."
"Why, how—you wouldn't have me to be a mean-spirited fellow, who would live all for money, and not care how it comes. I can't, sir—'tain't my way, I assure you. I do feel that I wasn't born to live nowhere except in the South; and so I thought when I wrote Ichabod Bunce my last letter. I told him every man on his own hook, now—for, you see, I couldn't stand his close-fisted contrivances no longer. He wanted me to work round the ring like himself, but I was quite too up-and-down for that, and so I squared off from him soon as I could. We never did agree when we were together, you see—'cause naterally, being brothers and partners, he couldn't shave me as he shaved other folks, and so, 'cause he couldn't by nature and partnership come 'cute over me, he was always grumbling, and for every yard of prints, he'd make out to send two yards of grunt and growls, and that was too much, you know, even for a pedler to stand; so we cut loose, and now as the people say on the river—every man paddle his own canoe."
"And you are now alone in the way of trade, and this store which you are about to establish is entirely on your own account?"
"Guess it is; and so, you see, I must pull with single oar up stream, and shan't quarrel with no friend that helps me now and then to send the boat ahead."