I guess he's over head
and ears in 'em, and the old man's gone in after him,
and he's got a drownin' man's grip round his neck.
There seems to be a kind of a lull--kind of a dead calm,
I call it--in the paint market just now; and then
again a ten-hundred-thousand-dollar man don't build a
hundred-thousand-dollar house without feeling the drain,
unless there's a regular boom. And just now there ain't
any boom at all. Oh, I don't say but what the old man's
got anchors to windward; guess he HAS; but if he's GOIN'
to leave me his money, I wish he'd left it six weeks ago.
Yes, sir, I guess there's a cold wave comin'; but you
can't generally 'most always tell, as a usual thing,
where the old man's concerned, and it's ONLY a guess."
Walker began to feed in his breaded chop with the same
nervous excitement with which he abandoned himself
to the slangy and figurative excesses of his talks.
Corey had listened with a miserable curiosity and compassion
up to a certain moment, when a broad light of hope
flashed upon him. It came from Lapham's potential ruin;
and the way out of the labyrinth that had hitherto seemed
so hopeless was clear enough, if another's disaster would
befriend him, and give him the opportunity to prove the
unselfishness of his constancy. He thought of the sum
of money that was his own, and that he might offer to lend,
or practically give, if the time came; and with his crude
hopes and purposes formlessly exulting in his heart,
he kept on listening with an unchanged countenance.
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