“You knew well enough how to make that stere-opticon slide,” remarked the boy with severity.
“Yes,” mused Mr. Shull, “that darned thing--that made a peck o’ trouble, didn’t it? I dunno what on earth possessed me; I kind o’ seemed to git the notion o’ doin’ it into my head all to once ’t, and somehow I never dreamt of its rilin’ Marseny so; you couldn’t tell that a man ’ud be so blamed touchy as all that, could you?--and I dunno, like as not he’d ’a’ enlisted anyhow. But I do wish he’d showed me how to make them pesky enlargements afore he went. If I’d only seen him do one, even once, I could ’a’ picked the thing up, but I never did. It’s just my luck!”
“Say,” said the boy, looking up with a sudden thought, “do you know what my mother heard yesterday? It’s all over the place that before Marseny left he went to Squire Schermerhorn’s and made his will, and left everything he’s got to the Parmalee girl, in case he gits killed. So, if anything happens she’d be your partner, wouldn’t she?”
Newton Shull stared with surprise. “Well, now, that beats creation,” he said, after a little. “Somehow you know that never occurred to me, and yet, of course, that ’ud be jest his style.”
“Yes, sir,” repeated the other, “they say he’s left her every identical thing.”
“It’s allus that way in this world,” reflected Mr. Shull, sadly. “Them that don’t need it one solitary atom, they’re eternally gettin’ every mortal thing left to ’em. Why, that girl’s so rich already she don’t know what to do with her money. If I was her, I bet a cooky I wouldn’t go pikin’ off to the battlefield, doin’ nursin’ and tyin’ on bandages, and fannin’ men while they were gittin’ their legs cut off. No, sirree; I’d let the Sanitary Commission scuffle along without me, I can tell you! A hoss and buggy and a fust-class two-dollar-a-day hotel, and goin’ to the theatre jest when I took the notion--that’d be good enough for me.”
“I suppose the sign then ’ud be ‘Shull & Parmalee,’ wouldn’t it?” queried the boy.
“Well, now, I ain’t so sure about that,” said Mr. Shull, thoughtfully. “It might be that, bein’ a woman, her name ’ud come first, out o’ politeness. But then, of course, most prob’ly she’d want to sell out instid, and then I’d make the valuation, and she could give me time. Or she might want to stay in, only on the quiet, you know--what they call a silent partner.”