“At dinner-time I went back to Mrs. Peevy’s.

“ ‘Shall I keep some soup hot for Mr. Tatum till he comes back?’ she asks.

“ ‘If you do, ma’am,’ says I, ‘you’ll more than exhaust for firewood all the coal in the bosom of the earth and all the forests on the outside of it.’

“So there, you see,” said Jefferson Peters, in conclusion, “how hard it is ever to find a fairminded and honest business-partner.”

“But,” I began, with the freedom of long acquaintance, “the rule should work both ways. If you had offered to divide the reward you would not have lost—”

Jeff’s look of dignified reproach stopped me.

“That don’t involve the same principles at all,” said he. “Mine was a legitimate and moral attempt at speculation. Buy low and sell high—don’t Wall Street endorse it? Bulls and bears and pigs—what’s the difference? Why not bristles as well as horns and fur?”