Chauncy did not say whether he was good for the money, or simply for a “subscription”; a difference which all handlers of “subscription papers” appreciate. All this time, Walter was wondering what Chauncy was driving at.
“Of course I said I didn’t care about the money, and Tripp said he didn’t; and Tripp said that it should be all right. It should all be paid over to us; or rather, the equivalent of it. His folks would feel so badly if they lost another race, and he knew his crew wouldn’t have the heart to row that next race. ‘There,’ said he, ‘it shall be between us. If you and that Plympton—that’s what you call him—will just let up now and then on your rowing, and pull easy, I think we can handle the rest of you, and—and—’”
“What do you mean?” said Walter abruptly. “Sell out?”
He was now more erect than ever, straightening up because stiffened by a sense of indignation.
“Hold on, Plympton, you don’t understand,” said Chauncy soothingly. He saw that he had made a mistake. He “had put too many goods on the market at once,” to use his own phrase. Continuing his soothing tone of voice, he said: “I can’t but pity the Scarlet Grays, if they are feeling so badly and their folks are stirred up, and ‘the town is down on ’em.’ Lang says, why, his mother is just awful, he says, and is real nervous. To oblige them, I’d give it all away—I mean the prize.”
Such self–sacrifice! He was willing to throw himself away—as far as this boat–race was concerned—all for the sake of the Scarlet Grays’ feelings! In reality, he had already received a present of “five dollars” from Tripp, and expected another “five,” if successful with Walter. Walter’s instincts were always in the right place. A wrong thing coming to him, he would condemn as wrong, and a right thing, he would commend as right. But he was sympathetic, while conscientious. He felt for the individual sinner, while he disapproved of his sin; and his sympathy might cloud the decision of his judgment. When he thought of the Scarlet Grays, the occasion of so much parental disappointment, and the object of so much town talk and town sport, he did pity “the poor chaps,” as Chauncy whiningly labeled them in his continued talk. Chauncy saw that he was making an impression; that he was “putting the right goods on the market, and the right quantity;” and he continued to deliver them in a sympathetic, pitying, self–sacrificing tone. Suddenly Walter said to himself, “What am I doing, allowing this fellow to talk so? Where’s mother’s advice, ‘Honest, boy’? And then that psalm I was reading from, this morning. What did that say? Why, I can almost seem to see it written in the sky!”