We can be
useful to you, you to us. A break would be silly."
"That's the way it looks to me," I assented. And I decided that my sharp
talk to Roebuck had set them to estimating my value to them.
"Sam Ellersly," Langdon presently remarked, "tells me he's campaigning hard
for you at the Travelers. I hope you'll make it. We're rather a slow crowd;
a few men like you might stir things up."
I am always more than willing to give others credit for good sense and good
motives. It was not vanity, but this disposition to credit others with
sincerity and sense, that led me to believe him, both as to the Coal matter
and as to the Travelers Club. "Thanks, Langdon," I said; and that he might
look no further for my motive, I added: "I want to get into that club much
as the winner of a race wants the medal that belongs to him. I've built
myself up into a rich man, into one of the powers in finance, and I feel
I'm entitled to recognition."
"I don't quite follow you," he said. "I can't see that you'll be either
better or worse for getting into the Travelers."
"No more I shall," replied I. "No more is the winner of the race the better
or the worse for having the medal. But he wants it.
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