"Well," I says, soothing, "of course that's always the way when anybody comes back. They's changes. Things ain't the same. Folks has gone away—"
He cut me short off. "Oh," he says, "it ain't that. I expected that. There were enough folks here. It's something else. When I went away from here twenty years ago, I had just thirty-six dollars to go on. Now I've come back, and I don't mind telling you that I've got not far from six hundred thousand invested. Well, from the time I went off, I used to plan how I'd come back some day, just about like I have come back, and see folks, and give something to the town, and give a lunch like I did to-day. I've laid awake nights planning it. And I liked to think about it."
"Well," I says, "and you've done it."
He didn't pay attention. "You remember," he says, "how I used to live over on the Slew with my uncle in the house that wasn't painted? He'd got together a cow somehow, and I use' to carry the milk. I never owned a pair of shoes till I was fifteen and earned them, and I never went to school after I was twelve. And when I went to the city I begun at the bottom and lived on nothing and went to night school and got through the whole works up to pardner for them I used to sweep out for. When I got my first ten thousand I thought: 'That's what I'm going to give that little old town—when I get enough more.' Well, I've done it, and I ain't got no more satisfaction out of it than if I'd thrown it in the gutter. And that"—he looked at me solemn—"was," says he, "the durndest, stiffest luncheon I ever et at."
"Well," I says, "of course—"
"When I think," he says, "of the way I planned it—with the men all coming around me, and slapping me on the back, and being glad to see me—"
"Oh, Nick!" I says. "Nick Nordman! Was that what you wanted?"
He looked at me in perfect astonishment. "Why," says he, "ain't that what anybody wants?"
I rose right up on my feet and I went over and put out my hand to him. "Why, Nick," I says, "don't you see? We was afraid of you. I was afraid of you. I froze right up and give up telling you about folks hanging themselves and all sorts of interesting things because I thought you wouldn't care. Why, they don't know you care!"