"
"Oh, my friend," I laughed, "that's absurd!"
But he had no reply, and his wife, as she resumed her sewing, said,
sweetly, as if to her needle, "Ah, I think Pastropbon don't got to charge
nut'n' if he don't feel like." And I could not move them.
As I was leaving them, a sudden conjecture came to me.
"Did those birthday numbers bring you any luck?"
The taxidermist shook his head, good-naturedly, but when his wife laughed
he turned upon her.
"Wait! I dawn't be done wid doze number' yet."
I guessed that, having failed with them in the daily drawings, he would
shift the figures after some notion of magical significance and venture a
ticket, whole or fractional, in the monthly drawing.
Scarcely ten days after, as I sat at breakfast with my newspaper spread
beside my plate, I fairly spilled my coffee as my eye fell upon the name
of P.T.B. Manouvrier, of No.--St. Peter Street. Old Pastropbon had drawn
seventy-five thousand dollars in the lottery.
IV
All the first half of the day, wherever I was, in the street-car, at my
counting-desk, on the exchange, no matter to what I gave my attention, my
thought was ever on my friend the taxidermist. At luncheon it was the
same. He was rich! And what, now? What next? And what--ah! what?-at last?
Would the end be foul or fair? I hoped, yet feared.
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