'If you would take your hand away from your mouth, Henry,' said his uncle sharply, 'perhaps I could make out what you're trying to say.'
'Why, you see, Uncle Arthur, there's a fellow bought the old Sunbury _Gleaner_ and he's awfully smart--got his training in New York--and he's brought the paper already--why, it ain't eight months!--to where he's right on the point of turning his corner. You see, a thousand dollars now may easily be worth ten thousand in a few years. The _Voice_ is a rotten paper. Nobody reads the darned thing. And I can't work for old Boice, anyhow. He drives me crazy. If he'd just give me half a chance to do the kind of thing I can do best once in a while; but this----'
'Henry, are you asking me to advance you a thousand dollars of your principal?'
'But, you see, it's so close to November seventh, anyway, that I thought----'
'You thought that on your twenty-first birthday I would at once close out the investments I have made with the money your mother left and hand you the principal in cash?'
Henry stared at him, his thoughts for the moment frozen stiff. In Uncle Arthur's obstructionist attitude, so suddenly revealed, lay the promise of a new, wholly undreamed-of disappointment. It was crushing. Then, almost in the same second, it was stimulating. Henry's eyes blazed.
'You mean to say----' he began, shouting.
'I mean to say that I haven't the slightest intention of letting you squander the money your mother so painfully--'
'But I'm your uncle and your guardian----'
'You needn't think you're going to keep that one minute after November seventh!'
'I will use my judgment. I won't be dictated to by a boy who----'
'Henry, I won't have such talk here. I think you had better go.'
Henry, with a good deal of mumbling, went. He was bewildered. And the little storm of indignant anger had shaken him. He returned, during the ride back past the tenements on the jerky cable-car, through streets that swarmed with noisy, ragged children and frowsy adults and all the smells, to depression. McGibbon said that Uncle Arthur's threat to hold the money after the seventh of November was a distinct point.
'In these matters, unfortunately, where a relative or family friend has for years had charge of money belonging to others, little temptations are bound to come up. Now, your uncle may be the most scrupulously honest of men, but----'