"When I went in and told Munsberg he pretty near threw a fit.Of course he thought I was kidding.But when I made him believe it, he was as glad as if he'd had luck himself.It was just fine the way people took it.Tell you what, it takes good luck, or bad luck, to show you how good-natured a lot of folks are.They'll treat Bennett and the page all right; you'll see.""They'll miss you," said Galton.
"I shall miss them," Tembarom answered in a voice with a rather depressed drop in it.
"I shall miss you," said Galton.
Tembarom's face reddened a little.
"I guess it'd seem rather fresh for me to tell you how I shall miss you," he said."I said that first day that I didn't know how to tell you how I--well, how I felt about you giving a mutt like me that big chance.You never thought I didn't know how little I did know, did you?" he inquired almost anxiously.
"That was it--that you did know and that you had the backbone and the good spirits to go in and win," Galton replied."I'm a tired man, and good spirits and good temper seem to me about the biggest assets a man can bring into a thing.I shouldn't have dared do it when I was your age.You deserved the Victoria Cross," he added, chuckling.
"What's the Victoria Cross?" asked Tembarom.
"You'll find out when you go to England."
"Well, I'm not supposing that you don't know about how many billion things I'll have to find out when I go to England.""There will be several thousand," replied Galton moderately; "but you'll learn about them as you go on.""Say," said Tembarom, reflectively, "doesn't it seem queer to think of a fellow having to keep up his spirits because he's fallen into three hundred and fifty thousand a year? You wouldn't think he'd have to, would you?""But you find he has?" queried Galton, interestedly.
Tembarom's lifted eyes were so honest that they were touching.
"I don't know where I'm at," he said."I'm going to wake up in a new place--like people that die.If you knew what it was like, you wouldn't mind it so much; but you don't know a blamed thing.It's not having seen a sample that rattles you.""You're fond of New York?"
"Good Lord! it's all the place I know on earth, and it's just about good enough for me, by gee! It's kept me alive when it might have starved me to death.My! I've had good times here," he added, flushing with emotion."Good times-- when I hadn't a whole meal a day!""You'd have good times anywhere," commented Galton, also with feeling.
"You carry them over your shoulder, and you share them with a lot of other people."He certainly shared some with Joe Bennett, whom he took up-town and introduced right and left to his friendly patrons, who, excited by the atmosphere of adventure and prosperity, received him with open arms.
To have been the choice of T.Tembarom as a mere representative of the EARTH would have been a great thing for Bennett, but to be the choice of the hero of a romance of wildest opulence was a tremendous send-off.He was accepted at once, and when Tembarom actually "stood for" a big farewell supper of his own in "The Hall," and nearly had his hand shaken off by congratulating acquaintances, the fact that he kept the new aspirant by his side, so that the waves of high popularity flowed over him until he sometimes lost his joyful breath, established him as a sort of hero himself.
Mr.Palford did not know of this festivity, as he also found he was not told of several other things.This he counted as a feature of his client's exoticism.His extraordinary lack of concealment of things vanity forbids many from confessing combined itself with a quite cheerful power to keep his own counsel when he was, for reasons of his own, so inclined.
"He can keep his mouth shut, that chap," Hutchinson had said once, and Mr.Palford remembered it."Most of us can't.I've got a notion I can;but I don't many's the time when I should.There's a lot more in him than you'd think for.He's naught but a lad, but he is na half such a fool as he looks."He was neither hesitant nor timid, Mr.Palford observed.In an entirely unostentatious way he soon realized that his money gave things into his hands.He knew he could do most things he chose to do, and that the power to do them rested in these days with himself without the necessity of detailed explanation or appeal to others, as in the case, for instance, of this mysterious friend or protege whose name was Strangeways.Of the history of his acquaintance with him Palford knew nothing, and that he should choose to burden himself with a half-witted invalid --in these terms the solicitor described him--was simply in-explainable.If he had asked for advice or by his manner left an opening for the offering of it, he would have been most strongly counseled to take him to a public asylum and leave him there;but advice on the subject seemed the last thing he desired or anticipated, and talk about his friend was what he seemed least likely to indulge in.He made no secret of his intentions, but he frankly took charge of them as his own special business, and left the rest alone.
"Say nothing and saw wood," Palford had once been a trifle puzzled by hearing him remark casually, and he remembered it later, as he remembered the comments of Joseph Hutchinson.Tembarom had explained himself to Little Ann.