"Just a moment." She crossed the room and stood at the end of the big desk. He reached mechanically for his check-book, but she smiled and stopped him. "No; it isn't money, this time: it's something that money can't buy. I met Mr. Edward Raymer at the front door a few minutes ago; does he have an account with you?"
"Is it an accommodation to the bank, or to him?"
Jasper Grierson's laugh was grimly contemptuous.
"The bank isn't making anything out of him. The shoe is on the other foot."
"Not yet; but he wants to be. He was in to see me about it just now."
"What is the matter? Isn't he making money with his plant?"
"Oh, yes; his business is good enough. But he's like all the other young fools, nowadays; he ain't content to bet on a sure thing and grow with his capital. He wants to widen out and build and put in new machinery and cut a bigger dash generally. Thinks he's been too slow and sure."
"Are you going to stake him?" Margery waged relentless war with her birthright inclination to lapse into the speech of the mining-camps, but she stumbled now and then in talking to her father.
"I don't know; I guess not. Somehow, I've never had much use for him; and, besides, I've had another plan in mind."
"To organize another company and build a plant big enough to run him out."
Margery was turning the leaves of an illustrated prospectus of an Idaho irrigation company, and was apparently much more deeply interested in the electrotyped pictures than in the fortunes of Mr. Edward Raymer. And when she went on, she ignored the obliterative business suggestion and remained in the narrower channel of the personalities.
"Oh, I don't know: because, until just lately, he has never seemed to have much use for me, I guess. It's a stand-off, so far as likings go. I offered to reincorporate his outfit for him six months ago, and told him I'd take fifty-one per cent of the reorganization stock myself; but he wouldn't talk about it. Said what little he had was his own, and he proposed to keep it."
"But now he is willing to let you help him?"
"Not much; he don't look at it in that light. He wants to borrow money from the bank and put up the stock of his close corporation as collateral. It's safe enough, but I don't believe I'll do it."