"How 'bout the books?"

"I asked him to let me have the balance sheets, and he said that you must have them, but that he would come in in the morning and--well, what he said was that he would see me in the morning, and, as he put it, look after any little last thing."

"E-um'm!" David grunted. "He won't do no such a thing. We've seen the last of him, you bet, an' a good riddance. He'll take the nine o'clock to-night, that's what he'll do. Drawed his pay, I guess, didn't he?"

"He said he was to be paid for this month," answered John, "and took sixty dollars. Was that right?"

"Yes," said David, nodding his head absently. "What was it he said about them statements?" he inquired after a moment.

"He said he guessed you must have them."

"E-um'm!" was David's comment. "What'd he say about leavin'?"

John laughed and related the conversation as exactly as he could.

"What'd I tell ye," said Mr. Harum, with a short laugh. "Mebbe he won't go till to-morro', after all," he remarked. "He'll want to put in a leetle more time tellin' how he was sent for in a hurry by that big concern f'm out of town 't he's goin' to."

"Upon my word, I can't understand it," said John, "knowing that you can contradict him."

"Wa'al," said David, "he'll allow that if he gits in the fust word, he'll take the pole. It don't matter anyway, long 's he's gone. I guess you an' me c'n pull the load, can't we?" and he dropped down off the counter and started to go out. "By the way," he said, halting a moment, "can't you come in to tea at six o'clock? I want to make ye acquainted with Polly, an' she's itchin' to see ye."

"I shall be delighted," said John.

"Polly," said David, "I've ast the young feller to come to tea, but don't you say the word 'Eagle,' to him. You c'n show your ign'rance 'bout all the other kinds of birds an' animals you ain't familiar with," said the unfeeling brother, "but leave eagles alone."

"What you up to now?" she asked, but she got no answer but a laugh.

From a social point of view the entertainment could not be described as a very brilliant success. Our friend was tired and hungry. Mr. Harum was unusually taciturn, and Mrs. Bixbee, being under her brother's interdict as regarded the subject which, had it been allowed discussion, might have opened the way, was at a loss for generalities. But John afterward got upon terms of the friendliest nature with that kindly soul.

CHAPTER XVI.

Some weeks after John's a.s.sumption 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 n.o.body 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?" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed 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.'"