Fulkerson took out his cigarette and said, with a smile: "To spend his
money, and get his daughters into the old Knickerbocker society. Maybe he
thought they were all the same kind of Dutch."
"And has he succeeded?"
"Well, they're not social leaders yet. But it's only a question of
time--generation or two--especially if time's money, and if 'Every Other
Week' is the success it's bound to be."
"You don't mean to say, Fulkerson," said March, with a half-doubting,
half-daunted laugh, "that he's your Angel?"
"That's what I mean to say," returned Fulkerson. "I ran onto him in
Broadway one day last summer. If you ever saw anybody in your life;
you're sure to meet him in Broadway again, sooner or later. That's the
philosophy of the bunco business; country people from the same
neighborhood are sure to run up against each other the first time they
come to New York. I put out my hand, and I said, 'Isn't this Mr. Dryfoos
from Moffitt?' He didn't seem to have any use for my hand; he let me keep
it, and he squared those old lips of his till his imperial stuck straight
out. Ever see Bernhardt in 'L'Etrangere'? Well, the American husband is
old Dryfoos all over; no mustache; and hay-colored chin-whiskers cut
slanting froze the corners of his mouth. He cocked his little gray eyes
at me, and says he: 'Yes, young man; my name is Dryfoos, and I'm from
Moffitt. But I don't want no present of Longfellow's Works, illustrated;
and I don't want to taste no fine teas; but I know a policeman that does;
and if you're the son of my old friend Squire Strohfeldt, you'd better
get out.' 'Well, then,' said I, 'how would you like to go into the
newspaper syndicate business?' He gave another look at me, and then he
burst out laughing, and he grabbed my hand, and he just froze to it. I
never saw anybody so glad.
"Well, the long and the short of it was that I asked him round here to
Maroni's to dinner; and before we broke up for the night we had settled
the financial side of the plan that's brought you to New York."
"I can see," said Fulkerson, who had kept his eyes fast on March's face,
"that you don't more than half like the idea of Dryfoos. It ought to give
you more confidence in the thing than you ever had. You needn't be
afraid," he added, with some feeling, "that I talked Dryfoos into the
thing for my own advantage."
"Oh, my dear Fulkerson!" March protested, all the more fervently because
he was really a little guilty.
"Well, of course not! I didn't mean you were. But I just happened to tell
him what I wanted to go into when I could see my way to it, and he caught
on of his own accord. The fact is," said Fulkerson, "I guess I'd better
make a clean breast of it, now I'm at it, Dryfoos wanted to get something
for that boy of his to do. He's in railroads himself, and he's in mines
and other things, and he keeps busy, and he can't bear to have his boy
hanging round the house doing nothing, like as if he was a girl. I told
him that the great object of a rich man was to get his son into just that
fix, but he couldn't seem to see it, and the boy hated it himself. He's
got a good head, and he wanted to study for the ministry when they were
all living together out on the farm; but his father had the old-fashioned
ideas about that. You know they used to think that any sort of stuff was
good enough to make a preacher out of; but they wanted the good timber
for business; and so the old man wouldn't let him. You'll see the fellow;
you'll like him; he's no fool, I can tell you; and he's going to be our
publisher, nominally at first and actually when I've taught him the ropes
a little."