Some weeks after John's assumption of his duties in the office of David
Harum, Banker, that gentleman sat reading his New York paper in the
"wing settin'-room," after tea, and Aunt Polly was occupied with the
hemming of a towel. The able editorial which David was perusing was
strengthening his conviction that all the intelligence and virtue of the
country were monopolized by the Republican party, when his meditations
were broken in upon by Mrs. Bixbee, who knew nothing and cared less
about the Force Bill or the doctrine of protection to American
industries.
"You hain't said nothin' fer quite a while about the bank," she
remarked. "Is Mr. Lenox gittin' along all right?"
"Guess he's gittin' into condition as fast as c'd be expected," said
David, between two lines of his editorial.
"It must be awful lonesome fer him," she observed, to which there was no
reply.
"Ain't it?" she asked, after an interval.
"Ain't what?" said David, looking up at her.
"Awful lonesome," she reiterated.
"Guess nobody ain't ever very lonesome when you're 'round an' got your
breath," was the reply. "What you talkin' about?"
"I ain't talkin' about you, 't any rate," said Mrs. Bixbee. "I was
sayin' it must be awful lonesome fer Mr. Lenox up here where he don't
know a soul hardly, an' livin' at that hole of a tavern."
"I don't see 't you've any cause to complain long's he don't," said
David, hoping that it would not come to his sister's ears that he had,
for reasons of his own, discouraged any attempt on John's part to better
his quarters, "an' he hain't ben very lonesome daytimes, I guess, so
fur, 'thout he's ben makin' work fer himself to kill time."
"What do you mean?"
"Wa'al," said David, "we found that Chet hadn't done more 'n to give
matters a lick an' a promise in most a year. He done just enough to keep
up the day's work an' no more an' the upshot on't is that John's had to
put in consid'able time to git things straightened out."
"What a shame!" exclaimed Aunt Polly.
"Keeps him f'm bein' lonesome," remarked her brother with a grin.
"An' he hain't had no time to himself!" she protested. "I don't believe
you've made up your mind yet whether you're goin' to like him, an' I
don't believe he'll _stay_ anyway."
"I've told more 'n forty-leven times," said Mr. Harum, looking up over
his paper, "that I thought we was goin' to make a hitch of it, an' he
cert'nly hain't said nuthin' 'bout leavin', an' I guess he won't fer a
while, tavern or no tavern. He's got a putty stiff upper lip of his own,
I reckon," David further remarked, with a short laugh, causing Mrs.
Bixbee to look up at him inquiringly, which look the speaker answered
with a nod, saying, "Me an' him had a little go-round to-day."
"You hain't had no _words_, hev ye?" she asked anxiously.
"Wa'al, we didn't have what ye might call _words_. I was jest tryin' a
little experiment with him."
"Humph," she remarked, "you're alwus tryin' exper'ments on somebody, an'
you'll be liable to git ketched at it some day."
"Exceptin' on you," said David. "You don't think I'd try any experiments
on you, do ye?"
"Me!" she cried. "You're at me the hull endurin' time, an' you know it."
"Wa'al, but Polly," said David insinuatingly, "you don't know how
int'restin' you _be_."
"Glad you think so," she declared, with a sniff and a toss of the head.
"What you ben up to with Mr. Lenox?"
"Oh, nuthin' much," replied Mr. Harum, making a feint of resuming his
reading.
"Be ye goin' to tell me, or--air ye too _'shamed_ on't?" she added with
a little laugh, which somewhat turned the tables on her teasing brother.
"Wa'al, I laid out to try an' read this paper," he said, spreading it
out on his lap, "but," resignedly, "I guess 't ain't no use. Do you know
what a count'fit bill is?" he asked.
"I dunno 's I ever see one," she said, "but I s'pose I do. They're agin
the law, ain't they?"
"The's a number o' things that's agin the law," remarked David dryly.
"Wa'al?" ejaculated Mrs. Bixbee after a moment of waiting.
"Wa'al," said David, "the' ain't much to tell, but it's plain I don't
git no peace till you git it out of me. It was like this: The young
feller's took holt everywhere else right off, but handlin' the money
bothered him consid'able at fust. It was slow work, an' I c'd see it
myself; but he's gettin' the hang on't now. Another thing I expected
he'd run up agin was count'fits. The' ain't so very many on 'em round
now-a-days, but the' is now an' then one. He allowed to me that he was
liable to get stuck at fust, an' I reckoned he would. But I never said
nuthin' about it, nor ast no questions until to-day; an' this afternoon
I come in to look 'round, an' I says to him, 'What luck have you had
with your money? Git any bad?' I says. 'Wa'al,' he says, colorin' up a
little, 'I don't know how many I may have took in an' paid out agin
without knowin' it,' he says, 'but the' was a couple sent back from New
York out o' that package that went down last Friday.'"
"'What was they?' I says.
"'A five an' a ten,' he says.
"'Where be they?' I says.
"'They're in the draw there--they're ruther int'restin' objects of
study,' he says, kind o' laughin' on the wrong side of his mouth.
"'Countin' 'em in the cash?' I says, an' with that he kind o' reddened
up agin. 'No, sir,' he says, 'I charged 'em up to my own account, an'
I've kept 'em to compare with.'
"'You hadn't ought to done that,' I says.
"'You think I ought to 'a' put 'em in the fire at once?' says he.
"'No,' I says, 'that wa'n't what I meant. Why didn't you mix 'em up with
the other money, an' let 'em go when you was payin' out? Anyways,' I
says, 'you charge 'em up to profit an' loss if you're goin' to charge
'em to anythin', an' let me have 'em,' I says.
"'What'll you do with 'em?' he says to me, kind o' shuttin' his jaws
together.
"'I'll take care on 'em,' I says. 'They mayn't be good enough to send
down to New York,' I says, 'but they'll go around here all right--jest
as good as any other,' I says, 'long 's you keep 'em movin'.'"
"David Harum!" cried Polly, who, though not quite comprehending some of
the technicalities of detail, was fully alive to the turpitude of the
suggestion. "I hope to gracious he didn't think you was in earnest. Why,
s'pose they was passed around, wouldn't somebody git stuck with 'em in
the long run? You know they would." Mrs. Bixbee occasionally surprised
her brother with unexpected penetration, but she seldom got much
recognition of it.
"I see by the paper," he remarked, "that the' was a man died in
Pheladelphy one day last week," which piece of barefaced irrelevancy
elicited no notice from Mrs. Bixbee.
"What more did he say?" she demanded.
"Wa'al," responded Mr. Harum with a laugh, "he said that he didn't see
why I should be a loser by his mistakes, an' that as fur as the bills
was concerned they belonged to him, an' with that," said the narrator,
"Mister Man gits 'em out of the draw an' jest marches into the back room
an' puts the dum things int' the fire."
"He done jest right," declared Aunt Polly, "an' you know it, don't ye
now?"
"Wa'al," said David, "f'm his standpoint--f'm his standpoint, I guess he
did, an'," rubbing his chin with two fingers of his left hand, "it's a
putty dum good standpoint too. I've ben lookin'," he added reflectively,
"fer an honest man fer quite a number o' years, an' I guess I've found
him; yes'm, I guess I've found him."
"An' be you goin' to let him lose that fifteen dollars?" asked the
practical Polly, fixing her brother with her eyes.
"Wa'al," said David, with a short laugh, "what c'n I do with such an
obst'nit critter 's he is? He jest backed into the britchin', an' I
couldn't do nothin' with him." Aunt Polly sat over her sewing for a
minute or two without taking a stitch.
"I'm sorry you done it," she said at last.
"I dunno but I did make ruther a mess of it," admitted Mr. Harum.