"You couldn't buy it for a thousand dollars," Professor Carey rejoined, thinking he had settled the matter.
"I know what your salary is--" Dick began.
"What is it?" Professor Carey demanded sharply.
"It's not a thousand a week," Dick retorted as sharply. "It's not five hundred a week, nor two-fifty a week--" He held up his hand to stall off interruption. "You've just told me I couldn't buy a week of your time for a thousand dollars. I'm not going to. But I am going to buy that week for two thousand. Heavens!--I've only got so many years to live--"
"And you can buy years?" Professor Carey queried slyly.
"Sure. That's why I'm here. I buy three years in one, and the week from you is part of the deal."
"But I have not accepted," Professor Carey laughed.
"If the sum is not sufficient," Dick said stiffly, "why name the sum you consider fair."
And Professor Carey surrendered. So did Professor Barsdale, head of the department of chemistry.
Already had Dick taken his coaches in mathematics duck hunting for weeks in the sloughs of the Sacramento and the San Joaquin. After his bout with physics and chemistry he took his two coaches in literature and history into the Curry County hunting region of southwestern Oregon. He had learned the trick from his father, and he worked, and played, lived in the open air, and did three conventional years of adolescent education in one year without straining himself. He fished, hunted, swam, exercised, and equipped himself for the university at the same time. And he made no mistake. He knew that he did it because his father's twenty millions had invested him with mastery. Money was a tool. He did not over-rate it, nor under-rate it. He used it to buy what he wanted.
"The weirdest form of dissipation I ever heard," said Mr. Crockett, holding up Dick's account for the year. "Sixteen thousand for education, all itemized, including railroad fares, porters' tips, and shot-gun cartridges for his teachers."
"He passed the examinations just the same," quoth Mr. Slocum.
"And in a year," growled Mr. Davidson. "My daughter's boy entered Belmont at the same time, and, if he's lucky, it will be two years yet before he enters the university."
"Well, all I've got to say," proclaimed Mr. Crockett, "is that from now on what that boy says in the matter of spending his money goes."