Art tha struck dumb, lad!" he said almost fiercely to Tembarom."By Judd! Tha well may be!"Tembarom was standing holding the back of a chair.He was pale, and had once opened his mouth, and then gulped and shut it.Little Ann had dropped her sewing.His first look had leaped to her, and she had looked back straight into his eyes.
"I'm struck something," he said, his half-laugh slightly unsteady.
"Who'd blame me?"
"You'd better sit down," said Little Ann."Sudden things are upsetting."He did sit down.He felt rather shaky.He touched himself on his chest and laughed again.
"Me!" he said."T.T.! Hully gee! It's like a turn at a vaudeville."The sentiment prevailing in Hutchinson's mind seemed to verge on indignation.
"Thee th' master of Temple Barholm! " he ejaculated."Why, it stood for seventy thousand pound' a year!""It did and it does," said Mr.Palford, curtly.He had less and less taste for the situation.There was neither dignity nor proper sentiment in it.The young man was utterly incapable of comprehending the meaning and proportions of the extraordinary event which had befallen him.It appeared to present to him the aspect of a somewhat slangy New York joke.
"You do not seem much impressed, Mr.Temple Barholm," he said.
"Oh, I'm impressed, all right," answered Tembarom, "but, say, this thing can't be true! You couldn't make it true if you sat up all night to do it.""When I go into the business details of the matter tomorrow morning you will realize the truth of it," said Mr.Palford."Seventy thousand pounds a year--and Temple Barholm--are not unsubstantial facts.""Three hundred and fifty thousand dollars, my lad--that's what it stands for!" put in Mr.Hutchinson.
"Well," said Tembarom, "I guess I can worry along on that if I try hard enough.I mayn't be able to keep myself in the way I've been used to, but I've got to make it do."Mr.Palford stiffened.He did not know that the garish, flippant-sounding joking was the kind of defense the streets of New York had provided Mr.Temple Barholm with in many an hour when he had been a half-clad newsboy with an empty stomach, and a bundle of unsold newspapers under his arm.
"You are jocular," he said."I find the New Yorkers are given to being jocular--continuously."Tembarom looked at him rather searchingly.Palford wouldn't have found it possible to believe that the young man knew all about his distaste and its near approach to disgust, that he knew quite well what he thought of his ten-dollar suit, his ex-newsboy's diction, and his entire incongruousness as a factor in any circumstances connected with dignity and splendor.He would certainly not have credited the fact that though he had not the remotest idea what sort of a place Temple Barholm was, and what sort of men its long line of possessors had been, he had gained a curious knowledge of their significance through the mental attitude of their legal representative when he for a moment failed to conceal his sense of actual revolt.
"It seems sort of like a joke till you get on to it," he said."But Iguess it ain't such a merry jest as it seems."And then Mr.Palford did begin to observe that he had lost his color entirely; also that he had a rather decent, sharp-cut face, and extremely white and good young teeth, which he showed not unattractively when he smiled.And he smiled frequently, but he was not smiling now.