"What makes you think so?" replied Stophel.
"You credit too much."
"Not I, indeed, sir; I don't credit at all."
"Ay, how do you make that out? Don't I see the poor people every day carrying away your bread, and yet paying you nothing?"
"Pshaw! what of that? They will pay me all in a lump at last."
"At last!" exclaimed the governor, "at the last day, I suppose. You think the Almighty will stand paymaster, and wipe off all your old scores for you at a dash."
"Not by any means, squire. The poor bakers can't give such long credit; but I will tell you how we work the matter. Washington directed me to supply these poor people at his expense, and I do it. Believe me, squire, he has often, at the end of the season, paid me as much as eighty dollars, and that, too, for poor creatures who did not know the hand that fed them; for I had strict orders from him not to mention it to anybody."
In a former chapter we learned the magnanimity of his conduct towards one Payne, who knocked him down for a supposed insult. Mr. Payne relates that after the Revolution he called upon Washington at Mount Vernon.
"As I drew near the house," he says, "I began to experience a rising fear lest he should call to mind the blow I had given him in former days. Washington met me at the door with a kind welcome, and conducted me into an adjoining room where Mrs. Washington sat.
"'Here, my dear,' said he, presenting me to his lady, 'here is the little man you have so often heard me talk of, and who, on a difference between us one day, had the resolution to knock me down, big as I am; I know you will honor him as he deserves, for I assure you he has the heart of a true Virginian.'"