“I should say he was honest enough, was he not?” said John.
“Oh, yes,” replied David with a touch of scorn, “he was honest enough fur ’s money matters was concerned; but he hadn’t no tack, nor no sense, an’ many a time he done more mischief with his gibble-gabble than if he’d took fifty dollars out an’ out. Fact is,” said David, “the kind of honesty that won’t actually steal ’s a kind of fool honesty that’s common enough; but the kind that keeps a feller’s mouth shut when he hadn’t ought to talk ’s about the scurcest thing goin’. I’ll jes’ tell ye, fer example, the last mess he made. You know Purse, that keeps the gen’ral store? Wa’al, he come to me some months ago, on the quiet, an’ said that he wanted to borro’ five hunderd. He didn’t want to git no endorser, but he’d show me his books an’ give me a statement an’ a chattel morgidge fer six months. He didn’t want nobody to know ’t he was anyway pushed fer money because he wanted to git some extensions, an’ so on. I made up my mind it was all right, an’ I done it. Wa’al, about a month or so after he come to me with tears in his eyes, as ye might say, an’ says, ‘I got somethin’ I want to show ye,’ an’ handed out a letter from the house in New York he had some of his biggist dealin’s with, tellin’ him that they regretted”—here David gave John a nudge—“that they couldn’t give him the extensions he ast for, an’ that his paper must be paid as it fell due—some twelve hunderd dollars. ‘Somebody ’s leaked,’ he says, ‘an’ they’ve heard of that morgidge, an’ I’m in a putty scrape,’ he says.
“ ‘H’m’m,’ I says, ‘what makes ye think so?’
“ ‘Can’t be nothin’ else,’ he says; ‘I’ve dealt with them people fer years an’ never ast fer nothin’ but what I got it, an’ now to have ’em round up on me like this, it can’t be nothin’ but what they’ve got wind o’ that chattel morgidge,’ he says.
“ ‘H’m’m,’ I says. ‘Any o’ their people ben up here lately?’ I says.
“ ‘That’s jest it,’ he says. ‘One o’ their travellin’ men was up here last week, an’ he come in in the afternoon as chipper as you please, wantin’ to sell me a bill o’ goods, an’ I put him off, sayin’ that I had a putty big stock, an’ so on, an’ he said he’d see me agin in the mornin’—you know that sort of talk,’ he says.
“ ‘Wa’al,’ I says, ‘did he come in?’
“ ‘No,’ says Purse, ‘he didn’t. I never set eyes on him agin, an’ more’n that,’ he says, ‘he took the first train in the mornin’, an’ now,’ he says, ‘I expect I’ll have ev’ry last man I owe anythin’ to buzzin’ ’round my ears.’
“ ‘Wa’al,’ I says, ‘I guess I see about how the land lays, an’ I reckon you ain’t fur out about the morgidge bein’ at the bottom on’t, an’ the’ ain’t no way it c’d ’a’ leaked out ’ceptin’ through that dum’d chuckle-head of a Timson. But this is the way it looks to me—you hain’t heard nothin’ in the village, have ye?’ I says.
“ ‘No,’ he says. ‘Not yit,’ he says.
“ ‘Wa’al, ye won’t, I don’t believe,’ I says, ‘an’ as fur as that drummer is concerned, you c’n bet,’ I says, ‘that he didn’t nor won’t let on to nobody but his own folks—not till his bus’nis is squared up, an’ more ’n that,’ I says, ‘seein’ that your trouble ’s ben made ye by one o’ my help, I don’t see but what I’ll have to see ye through,’ I says. ‘You jes’ give me the address of the New York parties, an’ tell me what you want done, an’ I reckon I c’n fix the thing so ’t they won’t bother ye. I don’t believe,’ I says, ‘that anybody else knows anythin’ yet, an’ I’ll shut up Timson’s yawp so ’s it’ll stay shut.’ ”
“How did the matter come out?” asked John, “and what did Purse say?”
“Oh,” replied David, “Purse went off head up an’ tail up. He said he was everlastin’ly obliged to me, an’—he, he, he!—he said ’twas more ’n he expected. You see I charged him what I thought was right on the ’rig’nal deal, an’ he squimmidged some, an’ I reckon he allowed to be putty well bled if I took holt agin; but I done as I agreed on the extension bus’nis, an’ I’m on his paper for twelve hunderd fer nothin’, jest because that nikum-noddy of a Timson let that drummer bamboozle him into talkin’. I found out the hull thing, an’ the very day I wrote to the New York fellers fer Purse, I wrote to Gen’ral Wolsey to find me somebody to take Timson’s place. I allowed I’d ruther have somebody that didn’t know nobody, than such a clackin’ ole he-hen as Chet.”
“I should have said that it was rather a hazardous thing to do,” said John, “to put a total stranger like me into what is rather a confidential position, as well as a responsible one.”
“Wa’al,” said David, “in the fust place I knew that the Gen’ral wouldn’t recommend no deadbeat nor no skin, an’ I allowed that if the raw material was OK, I could break it in; an’ if it wa’n’t I should find it out putty quick.
