He said that the billet of foreman would just suit
his father's son.
"The equivalent of what The Babe has destroyed," said my brother Ajax,
"if put out at compound interest, five per cent., would in a hundred
years amount to more than fifty thousand pounds."
"I'm awfully sorry," murmured The Babe.
"I fear," observed Ajax to me later, "that we cannot afford to nurse
this infant."
I was of the same opinion; so The Babe departed, and for a season we
saw his chubby face no more. Then one day, like a bolt from the blue,
came an unstamped letter from San Francisco. The Babe wrote to ask for
money. Such letters, as a rule, may be left unanswered, but not
always. Ajax and I read The Babe's ill-written lines, and filled in
the gaps in the text. Connoted and collated, it became a manuscript of
extraordinary interest and significance. We inferred that if the sum
demanded were not sent, the writer might be constrained to cast
himself as rubbish to the void. Now The Babe had his little failings,
but cowardice was not one of them. Indeed, his physical courage
redeemed in a sense his moral and intellectual weakness.
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