Page:Wilson - The Boss of Little Arcady (1905).djvu/30

 "That's all very well, but it isn't high conduct," insisted Bundy.

Westley Keyts now achieved the nearest approach to diplomacy I have ever known of him.

"Oh, well, Asa, after all, this is a world of give and take. 'Live and let live' is my motto."

"We must use common sense in these matters, you know, Bundy," observed Solon, judicially.

And that sophistry prevailed, for we were weak unto faintness from our burden.

We gave letters setting forth that J. Rodney Potts was the ideal inhabitant of a city larger than our own. We glowed in describing the virtues of our departing townsman; his honesty of purpose, his integrity of character, his learning in the law, his wide range of achievement, civic and military,—all those attributes that fitted him to become a stately ornament and a tower of strength to any community larger in the least degree than our own modest town.

And there was the purse. Fifty dollars was suggested by Eustace Eubanks, but Asa Bundy said that this would not take Potts far enough. Eustace said that a man could travel an immense distance for fifty dollars. Bundy retorted that an ordinary man might perhaps go far enough on that sum, but not Potts.

"If we are to perpetrate this outrage at all," insisted Bundy, pulling in calculation at his little chin-whisker, "let us do it thoroughly. A hundred dollars can't take Potts any too far. We must see that he keeps going until he could never get back—"