Sharp occupied _his_ time in buying up superfluous real estate, which seemed to have been infected by copper, and showed a disposition to _rise_—and he was afraid it might go up and never come down again. The conveyancers assured him that he ought to take it—like a sportsman—on the wing, right and left. He did, and clapped a heavy mortgage on it to keep it steady.
That disturbed the figures on Flat’s memorandum—for he hoped to have bought and paid for it with his expected profit on copper, and to have staggered somebody else’s property with a mortgage from the surplus. It was provoking.
Jones and Wilkins resolved to “take a shy at the copper anyway, while it was going;” but the stock of all the companies seemed shy of them. They “bid ten dollars through a broker”—it was twelve. “Bid twelve”—it was fourteen. Wilkins had had enough of it. He believed it was “only a bubble blown up to catch the eyes of fools. He was done with it.” But Jones was down in the morning, as merry as a lark, and as early. He “knew some of the outsiders, and thought he would catch some of them before the morning was over.” He did—and went home to dinner, having made “a fortunate hit.”
“Five hundred shares,” said he, “at fifteen, and the last sale ‘after board,’ nineteen and a half! Four dollars and fifty cents per share. Five aught is _naught_; five fives are twenty-five, five fours are twenty, and two are twenty-two. Twenty-two hundred and fifty dollars—that will do for one day, _I_ should say. Wilkins would like me to give _him_ half, as we were to have gone in together yesterday, but I wonder what Wilkins ever did for me, that I should give _him_ eleven hundred and twenty-five dollars! Not _quite_ so green!”
The next morning Grubemout brought down some specimens, which “he thought” would yield forty per cent. _if they were assayed_, and thought that they ought to make an assessment of a dollar a share, so as to put on more hands and drive out the ore. Jones said that “that was right enough.”
The assessment was called in, at which the stock hesitated for a day or two—made a start and went on—but a second installment being urged, it faltered a little, and then stopped. At the third it “_declined_ a shade,” at which the “bears” gave a shake and a growl.