"Well, watch _me_," said Macnooder with a wave of his hand that played among the rubies and emeralds floating in his imagination. "Bill, I'd like to put you in--I can't--that's flat. I can't! Why, Bill, if you put your hand in your pocket this moment and took out that little green wallet of yours and said: 'Mr. Macnooder, this is your account--it's nothing--I dismiss it, I tear it to pieces--you are my guest from now on; let's start right;--what will you have?' If you should say that--" "I won't!" said Appleby, shrinking from the hypnotic caress in the financier's manner. "If you should do that _and_ should take out a nice new one hundred dollar bill--you have one, Bill, right in that old leather wallet--don't shrink, Bill, your alarm pains me--if you, now, here in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, John C. Green Foundation, should produce that one hundred dollar bill--slap it on the counter, shove it into my face, force it into my pocket, beg me to give you a little interest--_no_! No, Bill, no! I'd refuse--I'd _have_ to refuse. Don't build up any false hopes, Bill, don't." "I won't," said Appleby, yet already a sense of great personal loss had begun to invade him. "All I can let you in on are the regional rights--the Lawrenceville rights--for ten years. I might, I don't say it flat,--I want to consider,--but I _might_ extend them to Princeton. It's a gift, but I might. And do you know why I'm giving you this opportunity of a lifetime?" "Why, Doc?" "Because, Bill, I don't want to break you. I don't want to have to run you out of business. That's friendship, but there's more. I can use you," said Macnooder magnanimously. "You have the qualities I shall need in my future operations--I suffer from them now but I appreciate them. You will make an ideal watchdog of the dollar, and when the dollar leaves your hand, Bill, there won't be a rim left to it. Bill, let's do business--it's more than just the toothbrush, it's a whole future's open to you. Bill, the moment is yours. Choose! Fifth Avenue, a yacht, box at the opera--Lillian Russell!" Appleby fumbled in his pocket and drew out a cigar to break the spell, and the hand that held the match trembled. "Wall, now," he began cautiously, "to-morrow's to-morrow, and toothbrushes is toothbrushes. And say--gettin' down to tacks--who in Sam Hill ever wanted a folding toothbrush, nohow?" Macnooder's fist descended on a shivering glass counter as he cried triumphantly: "Say that again!" "Wall, who does want a folding toothbrush?" said Appleby, in a more bellicose manner.