Trading Part 53

"Why, I could read everything," said Roswell.

"And what good would _that_ do you?"

"I should like it," said Roswell. "I should have what I like."

"Solomon tried that once," said David, who was taking diligently his reporter's notes. "It didn't seem to answer then."

"Ah, but there were not so many books in his day," said Roswell.

"The worse for you, I should say. Besides, there are not so many now as there will be a thousand years hence. How about that, old fellow?"

"I can't read what there'll be a thousand years hence," said Roswell.

"You couldn't read what there are now, if you had them. You could not live long enough."

"What a musty old fogy he would be, by the time he had gone half through!" said Judy. "He would have used up his eyes; his spectacles would have made a ridge on his nose; he would live in an old coat that was never brushed; and his books would be all coffee stains, because he would take his breakfast over them. Poor old creature!"

"You'll be old then yourself, Judy," said some one.

"I won t," said the young lady promptly. "I mean to keep young."

"Ben Johnson--go ahead," said Norton. "It's your turn."

"I'd like to go supercargo in the China trade," said Ben; a lively-looking fellow enough.

"Good," said Norton. "Say why. Love of the sea wouldn't take you to China, I suppose."

"Not exactly," said Ben, with a confidential gleam in his eyes. "I should have nothing to do--and smoke seventy cigars a day."

"Seventy cigars!" cried out two or three of the girls. "Horrid!"

"You couldn't do it, old fellow."

"Easy," said Ben. "My cousins, Will Larkins and Dan Boston, did it every day."

"They must be of a practical turn of mind, I should think," said Norton. "They meant their voyage should pay--somebody--and so concluded it should be the tobacconist. Lucy Ellis--?"

"I should like to be very beautiful," said the girl, who had some pretensions that way already, or she wouldn't have said it in public,--"and have everybody love me."

"Everybody!" cried Judy. "All the boys, you mean."

"No indeed," said the beauty with a toss of her head. "I mean all the _men_."

"But people don't love people because they are handsome," said Norton.

"Don't they, though!" said Ben Johnson, who was a beauty in his way; as indeed so also was Norton. But here arose a furious debate of the question, in which almost everybody took part excepting David and Matilda. Laughing and shouting and discussing, the original game was almost lost sight of; and David sat with his pen in his hand, and Matilda listened in wondering amus.e.m.e.nt, while the negative and the affirmative of the proposition were urged and argued and fought for. At last Norton appealed.

"What do you think, David?"

"What do you think of our game?"

"I had forgot it, that's a fact," said Norton. "Who's next? O come along, we'll never settle that question. Who's next? Pink, I believe it is you. Matilda Laval! what's your capital and business?"

"Now you'll get a queer one," said Judy.

"It won't be the first, by some," said Norton; "that's one thing."

"This'll be a good one. Oh, ever so good!" said Judy.

"It won't be anything, if you can't hush," said Norton impatiently.

"Come, Pink, whatever it is, let us have it. What's your fancy?"

"I should like to have a medicine that would be sure to cure," said Matilda.

"A medicine!" cried Norton.

"She'd be a doctor," exclaimed Judy with a burst of laughter.

"What for, Pink?"

"I would go round, making sick people well."

"Beautiful, ain't it?" said Judy. "O we have such lots of goodness in our house, you wouldn't know it; and I don't know it my self. Fact is, it confuses me."

"Bill Langridge?"

"Governor of the State,"--called out Bill in reply.

"Why don't you say 'Sultan of Muscat,' at once?"

"Don't know Muscat--and don't care about governing where I'm a stranger. Might make mistakes, you see."

"Well--what's the good in being Governor of the State?--to you?"

"Having things my own way, don't you see? and at top of everything."

"There's the President, and all his secretaries," said Norton.

"They're not in my way. In the State, you know, n.o.body is over the Governor."

"That's what you call a moderate ambition," said David.

"Aims pretty high," said Bill.

"Not high enough," said another boy. "I'd choose to be commander in chief of the army."

"How's that any higher, Watson?" said Bill.