Page:Bayard Taylor - Joseph and His Friend.djvu/220

206 'untimely ripped' (as Shakespeare says) from its parent stalk. I can well imagine how incomprehensible all this may appear to you. In all probability much of your conversation at home, relative to crops and the like, would be to me an unknown dialect. But I should not, therefore, doubt your intelligence and judgment in such matters."

Joseph began to grow impatient. "Do I understand you to say, Mr. Blessing," he asked, "that the call for the fifth instalment can be met by the sale of a part of my stock?"

"In an ordinary case it might not under the peculiar circumstances of our operation be possible. But I trust I do not exaggerate my own influence when I say that it is within my power to arrange it. If you will confide it to my hands, you understand, of course, that a slight formality is necessary, a power of attorney?"

Joseph, in his haste and excitement, had not considered this, or any other legal point: Mr. Blessing was right.

"Then, supposing the shares to be worth only their par value," he said, "the power need not apply to more than one-tenth of my stock?"

Mr. Blessing came into collision with a gentleman passing him. Mutual wrath was aroused, followed by mutual apologies. "Let us turn into the other street," he said to Joseph; "really, our lives are hardly safe in this crowd; it is nearly three o'clock, and the banks will soon be closed."

"It would be prudent to allow a margin," he resumed, after their course had been changed: "the money market is very tight, and if a necessity were suspected, most capitalists are unprincipled enough to exact according to the urgency of the need. I do not say nor do I at all anticipate that it would be so in your case; still, the future is