I left him only half an hour ago, and he is just perfecting a motor, gentlemen, which will--"
"Does it go yet, Nathan?" interrupted Cobb, who was filling a glass from a decanter which a brown-coated darky had brought him. Cobb's wife was Nathan's cousin, and, therefore, he had a right to be familiar. "I went to see his machine the other day, but I couldn't make anything out of it. Horn is a little touched here, isn't he?" and he tapped his forehead and smiled knowingly.
"No, Amos, the motor was not running when I left the shop," answered Nathan, dryly and with some dignity, "but it will be, he assured me, perhaps by to-morrow." He could fight Billy Talbot, but he never crossed swords with Cobb, never in late years. Cobb was the one man in all the world, he once told Richard, with whom he had nothing in common.
"Oh, to-morrow?" And Cobb whistled as he put down the decanter and picked up the day's paper.
It was one of Cobb's jokes--this "to-morrow" of his neighbors. "What was a Northern man's to-day was always a Southern man's to-morrow," he would say. "I hope this young man of whom you speak so highly is not walking in the footsteps of this genius of a father? He looks to me like a young fellow that had some stuff in him if anybody would bring it out."
The half-concealed sneer in Cobb's voice grated also on old Judge Bowman, who threw down his book and looked up over his bowed spectacles. He was a testy old fellow, with a Burgundy face and shaggy white hair, a chin and nose that met together like a parrot's, and an eye like a hawk. It was one of his principles to permit none of his intimates to speak ill of his friends in his hearing. Criticisms, therefore, by an outsider like Cobb were especially obnoxious to him.
"Richard Horn's head is all right, Mr. Cobb, and so is his heart," he exclaimed in an indignant tone.
"As for his genius, sir--Gill is within the mark.
He IS one of the remarkable men of our day. You are quite right, too, about his young son, who has just left here. He has all the qualities that go to make a gentleman, and many of those which will make a jurist. He is now studying law with my associate, Judge Ellicott--a profession ennobled by his ancestors, sir, and one, for which what you call his 'stuff,' but which we, sir, call his 'blood,' especially fits him. You Northern men, I know, don't believe in blood. We do down here. This young man comes of a line of ancestors that have reflected great credit on our State for more than a hundred years, and he is bound to make his mark. His grandfather on his mother's side was our Chief Justice in 1810, and his great-grandfather was--"
"That's just what's the matter with most of you Southerners, Judge," interrupted Cobb, his black eyes snapping. "You think more of blood than you do of brains. We rate a man on Northern soil by what he does himself, not what a bundle of bones in some family burying-ground did for him before he was born. Don't you agree with me, Clayton?"
"I can't say I do, Cobb," replied the Colonel, slowly, stirring his toddy. "I never set foot on your soil but once, and so am unfamiliar with your ways."
He never liked Cobb. "He's so cursedly practical, and so proud of it, too," he would often say; "and if you will pardon me, sir--a trifle underbred."
"When was that?" asked Cobb, looking over the top of his paper.
"That was some years ago, when I chased a wounded canvas-back across the Susquehanna River, and had to go ashore to get him; and I want to tell you, sir, that what you call 'your soil' was damned disagreeable muck. I had to change my boots when I got back to my home, and I've never worn them since." And the Colonel crushed the sugar in his glass with his spoon as savagely as if each lump were the head of an enemy, and raised the mixture to his mouth.
Amos's thin lips curled. The high and lofty airs of these patricians always exasperated him. The shout of laughter that followed the Colonel's reply brought the color to his cheeks.
"Chased him like a runaway nigger, I suppose, Clayton, didn't you? and wrung his neck when you got him--" retorted Amos, biting his lips.
"Of course, like I would any other piece of my property that tried to get away, or as I would wring the neck of any man who would help him--" And the Colonel looked meaningly at the Vermonter and drained his glass with a gulp. Then smothering his anger, he moved away to the window, where he watched Mr. Talbot, who had just left the club and who at the moment was standing on the corner making his daily afternoon inspection of the two connecting streets; an occupation which Billy varied by saluting each new-corner with a slap of his cane on his checker-board trousers and a stentorian "Bah Jove!" Waggles meanwhile squatting pensively between his gaiters.
When an hour later the Colonel presented himself at the Horn mansion, no trace of this encounter with Cobb was in his face nor in his manner. Men did not air their grievances in their own nor anyone's else home around Kennedy Square.
Mrs. Horn met him with her hand extended. She had been watching for Oliver's return with a degree of impatience rarely seen in her. She had hoped that the Colonel would have called upon her before he went to his office, and could not understand his delay until Oliver had given his account of the morning mishaps. She was too anxious now to chide him. It was but another indication of his temperament, she thought--a fault to be corrected with the others that threatened his success in life.
Holding fast to the Colonel's hand she drew him to one of the old haircloth sofas and told him the whole story.
"Do not give the mortgage a thought, my dear Sallie," the Colonel said, In his kindest manner, when she had finished speaking, laying his hand on her wrist. "My only regret is that it should have caused you a moment's uneasiness. I know that our bank has lately been in need of a large sum of money, and this loan, no doubt, was called in by the board. But it will be all right--if not I will provide for it myself."
