All the money
we have between us is in my business, and we've got no rich friends or
anything of that sort. I don't know what I'll do if I have to be
hammered. I've been so careful, too! I didn't want to take this on,
but it seemed such a soft thing! If I could get off with twenty
thousand, I'd keep my head up. I hate to talk like this. I'd go down
like a man if I were alone, but--but--oh! Confound it all--!" he
exclaimed with an ominous break in his tone.
Aynesworth laid his hand upon the boy's arm.
"Look here," he said, "I'll try what I can do with Mr. Wingrave. Wait
here!"
Aynesworth found his employer alone with his broker, who was just
hastening off to keep an appointment. He plunged at once into his
appeal.
"Mr. Wingrave," he said, "you have just had a young broker named
Nesbitt on."
Wingrave glanced at a paper by his side.
"Yes," he said. "Six hundred short! I wish they wouldn't come to me."
"I've been talking to him downstairs," Aynesworth said. "This will
break him."
"Then I ought not to have done business with him at all," Wingrave
said coolly. "If he cannot find sixty thousand dollars, he has no
right to be in Wall street. I daresay he'll pay, though! They all
plead poverty--curs!"
"I think Nesbitt's case is a little different from the others,"
Aynesworth continued. "He is quite young, little more than a boy, and
he has only just started in business. To be hammered would be absolute
ruin for him.
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