"So he loves a horse! I shall not know my own son.... Mr. Belding, you say Richard works for you. May I ask, at what salary?"
"He gets forty dollars, board and outfit," replied Belding, proudly.
"Forty dollars?" echoed the father. "By the day or week?"
"The month, of course," said Belding, somewhat taken aback.
"Forty dollars a month for a young man who spent five hundred in the same time when he was at college, and who ran it into thousands when he got out!"
Mr. Gale laughed for the first time, and it was the laugh of a man who wanted to believe what he heard yet scarcely dared to do it.
"What does he do with so much money—money earned by peril, toil, sweat, and blood? Forty dollars a month!"
"He saves it," replied Belding.
Evidently this was too much for Dick Gale's father, and he gazed at his wife in sheer speechless astonishment. Dick's sister clapped her hands like a little child.
Belding saw that the moment was propitious.