"
"Yes, but we didn't go into it at his figures."
"No," said Barker, with an eager smile, "but you SOLD at his figures,
for I knew that when I found that YOU, my old partner, was in it; don't
you see, I preferred to buy it through your bank, and did at 110. Of
course, you wouldn't have sold it at that figure if it wasn't worth it
then, and neither I nor you are to blame if it dropped the next week to
60, don't you see?"
Stacy's eyes hardened for a moment as he looked keenly into his former
partner's bright gray ones, but there was no trace of irony in Barker's.
On the contrary, a slight shade of sadness came over them. "No," he said
reflectively, "I don't think I've ever been foolish or followed out my
OWN ideas, except once, and that was extravagant, I admit. That was
my idea of building a kind of refuge, you know, on the site of our old
cabin, where poor miners and played-out prospectors waiting for a strike
could stay without paying anything. Well, I sunk twenty thousand
dollars in that, and might have lost more, only Carter--Kitty's
father--persuaded me--he's an awful clever old fellow--into turning it
into a kind of branch hotel of Boomville, while using it as a hotel to
take poor chaps who couldn't pay, at half prices, or quarter prices,
PRIVATELY, don't you see, so as to spare their pride,--awfully pretty,
wasn't it?--and make the hotel profit by it.
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