are
business friends; business is business. You want to negotiate a loan.
Very good. On what paper? Will you pay three per cent a month? Where is
your security?"

"Surely, you will not exact those formalities from your old
schoolmate--him with whom you have so often sauntered down the groves of
Academe, discoursing of the beauty of virtue, and the grace that is in
kindliness--and all for so paltry a sum. Security? Our being
fellow-academics, and friends from childhood up, is security."

"Pardon me, my dear Frank, our being fellow-academics is the worst of
securities; while, our having been friends from childhood up is just no
security at all. You forget we are now business friends."

"And you, on your side, forget, Charlie, that as your business friend I
can give you no security; my need being so sore that I cannot get an
indorser."

"No indorser, then, no business loan."

"Since then, Charlie, neither as the one nor the other sort of friend
you have defined, can I prevail with you; how if, combining the two, I
sue as both?"

"Are you a centaur?"

"When all is said then, what good have I of your friendship, regarded in
what light you will?"

"The good which is in the philosophy of Mark Winsome, as reduced to
practice by a practical disciple."

"And why don't you add, much good may the philosophy of Mark Winsome do
me? Ah," turning invokingly, "what is friendship, if it be not the
helping hand and the feeling heart, the good Samaritan pouring out at
need the purse as the vial!"

"Now, my dear Frank, don't be childish. Through tears never did man see
his way in the dark. I should hold you unworthy that sincere friendship
I bear you, could I think that friendship in the ideal is too lofty for
you to conceive. And let me tell you, my dear Frank, that you would
seriously shake the foundations of our love, if ever again you should
repeat the present scene. The philosophy, which is mine in the strongest
way, teaches plain-dealing. Let me, then, now, as at the most suitable
time, candidly disclose certain circumstances you seem in ignorance of.
Though our friendship began in boyhood, think not that, on my side at
least, it began injudiciously. Boys are little men, it is said. You, I
juvenilely picked out for my friend, for your favorable points at the
time; not the least of which were your good manners, handsome dress, and
your parents' rank and repute of wealth. In short, like any grown man,
boy though I was, I