"Why, you know that you gave him your confidence, don't you?"
"Oh, yes."
"Well, then?"
"But what, what—how, how—ugh, ugh!"
"Why, didn't he tell you?"
"No."
"What! Didn't he tell you that it was a secret, a mystery?"
"Oh—yes."
"Well, then?"
"But I have no bond."
"Don't need any with Mr. Truman. Mr. Truman's word is his bond."
"But how am I to get my profits—ugh, ugh!—and my money back? Don't know anything. Ugh, ugh!"
"Oh, you must have confidence."
"Don't say that word again. Makes my head spin so. Oh, I'm so old and miserable, nobody caring for me, everybody fleecing me, and my head spins so—ugh, ugh!—and this cough racks me so. I say again, I ought to have a guardeean."
"So you ought; and Mr. Truman is your guardian to the extent you invested with him. Sorry we missed him just now. But you'll hear from him. All right. It's imprudent, though, to expose yourself this way. Let me take you to your berth."
Forlornly enough the old miser moved slowly away with him. But, while descending a stairway, he was seized with such coughing that he was fain to pause.
