"When we came up for the next I heard Flynn whispering at my ear, 'Finish him, Masther Jerry. If you don't, he'll put ye out.'
"I didn't need that warning. I sparred carefully for a minute, feeling out what he had left. He swung at me hard, just grazing my ear. Then I went after him again, feinted into an opening and caught him flush on the point of the chin."
He paused for breath. "I didn't want to, you know, Roger, but Flynn was so insistent--and, of course, having started--"
"'You bored in, that th' opposed might beware of thee,'" I paraphrased.
"Yes, I bored in. There was nothing else to do. Flynn didn't say much, but he was pleased as punch. It took ten minutes to bring the fellow around. I was bending over Sagorski, wetting his face, and as he looked up at me I told him I was awfully sorry. What do you think he said?
"'Aw, you go to hell!' Impolite beggar, wasn't he?"
"You have been at least catholic in the choice of companions," I remarked, with a smile, recalling Flynn's prediction about Jerry's weight in wild cats.
"Oh, yes. All sorts of people. I think on the whole I understand the poorer classes best. They do swear, I find, horribly at times, but they don't intend harm by it. I doubt if they really know what it means. 'Hell' is merely an expletive like 'Oh' or 'By Jove' with us chaps. Funny, isn't it?"
"That truck-driver didn't think so," I said.
"That was my first week. I know a lot more now. I've felt sorry about him."
"And down town, Jerry," I inquired. "How are things going there?"
"Oh, I've been going to the office pretty regularly, but it's slow work. I don't understand why, but I don't seem to get on at all."
"That's too bad," I said slowly. "You must get on, old man."
"Yes, I know, but it comes hard. It seems that I'm frightfully rich. In fact, nobody seems to know how rich I am. I've got millions and millions, twenty--thirty perhaps. So much that it staggers me. It's like the idea of infinity or perpetuity. I can't grasp it at all. It's piling up in new investments, just piling up and nothing can stop it."
"But if it was only doing some good--When I see the misery all about--"
"Wait a bit. You're putting the cart before the horse, my boy. There's no sin in being rich, in piling it up, as you say, if you're not doing anybody any harm. Have you ever thought of the thousands who work for you, of the lands, the railroads, the steamships, the mills, all carrying and producing--producing, Jerry, helping people to live, to work? Isn't it something to have a share in building up your country?"