“Humph!” retorted the reputable old gentleman angrily. “Every Esau, selling his birthright for a mess of pottage, would speak the same.” “Esau with a cigarette--really!” murmured young Morton, giving a ruminative puff. “But I say, father, it isn't a mess of pottage, don't y' know, it's a street railway.” As Mulberry Traction approached completion, the common stock reached forty. At that point Big Kennedy closed out his interest. Snapping the catchlock behind us, to the end that we be alone, he tossed a dropsical gray envelope on the table. “There's two hundred thousand dollars' worth of Uncle Sam's bonds,” said he. “That's your end of Mulberry Traction.” “You've sold out?” “Sold out an' got one million two hundred thousand.” “The stock would have gone higher,” said I. “You would have gotten more if you'd held on.” “Wall Street,” returned Big Kennedy, with a cautious shake of the head, “is off my beat. I'm afraid of them stock sharps; I feel like a come-on th' minute I begin to talk with one, an' I wouldn't trust 'em as far as I could throw a dog by th' tail. I break away as fast as ever I can, an' chase back to Fourteenth Street, where I'm wise to th' game. I've seen suckers like me who took a million dollars into Wall Street, an' came out in a week with nothin' but a pocket full of canceled postage stamps.” “I've been told,” said I with a laugh, and going with Big Kennedy's humor, “that two hundred years ago, Captain Kidd, the pirate, had his home on the site of the present Stock Exchange.” “Did he?” said Big Kennedy. “Well, I figger that his crew must have lived up an' down both sides of the street from him, an' their descendants are still holdin' down th' property. An' to think,” mused Big Kennedy, “that Trinity Church stares down th' length of Wall Street, with th' graves in th' Trinity churchyard to remind them stock wolves of th' finish! I'm a hard man, an' I play a hard game, but on th' level! if I was as big a robber as them Wall Street sharps, I couldn't look Trinity Church in th' face!” Then, coming back to Mulberry Traction and to me: “I've put it in bonds, d'ye see! Now if I was you, I'd stand pat on 'em just as they are. Lay 'em away, an' think to yourself they're for that little Blossom of yours.” At the name of Blossom, Big Kennedy laid his heavy hand on mine as might one who asked a favor. It was the thing unusual. Big Kennedy's rough husk gave scanty promise of any softness of sentiment to lie beneath. Somehow, the word and the hand brought the water to my eyes.' “It is precisely what I mean to do,” said I. “Blossom is to have it, an' have it as it is--two hundred thousand dollars in bonds.” Big Kennedy, with that, gave my hand a Titan's grip in indorsement of my resolve.