"Ah, well," smiled the other wanly, "if that subtle bane, we were speaking of but just now, is so soon beginning to work, in vain my appeal to you. Good-by."
"Nay," not untouched, "you do me injustice; instead of indulging present suspicions, I had rather make amends for previous ones. Here is something for your asylum. Not much; but every drop helps. Of course you have papers?"
"Of course," producing a memorandum book and pencil. "Let me take down name and amount. We publish these names. And now let me give you a little history of our asylum, and the providential way in which it was started." (6, 70-72)
We're still with the man in the grey-and-white suit. He's just got a clergyman to agree to donate to his charity. Psst: this clergyman has also just said that he feels bad for not believing in Guinea, and he's given Grey-and-white suit some change to give to Guinea the next time he sees him. All of a sudden, the clergyman wants to back out of donating to the charity, and these lines follow.
Basically Grey-and-white suit's like: Hmmm, are you letting the distrustful tendency in human nature poison you? Well, are you? Hmmm? The clergyman ponies up the cash—but not before he asks about "papers." Hmm, interesting. We're back at the notion that documentation is what determines what's legit. Grey-and-white suit writes his name down in a notebook with a pencil, and this semblance of a connection to an institution seems to be enough to prove that poor people are poor and that Grey-and-white suit is helping them.
"Nay, nay, you have none—none at all. Pardon, I see it. No confidence. Fool, fond fool that I am to seek it!"
"You are unjust, sir," rejoins the good lady with heightened interest; "but it may be that something untoward in your experiences has unduly biased you. Not that I would cast reflections. Believe me, I—yes, yes—I may say—that—that——"
"That you have confidence? Prove it. Let me have twenty dollars."
"Twenty dollars!"
"There, I told you, madam, you had no confidence."
The lady was, in an extraordinary way, touched. She sat in a sort of restless torment, knowing not which way to turn. She began twenty different sentences, and left off at the first syllable of each. At last, in desperation, she hurried out, "Tell me, sir, for what you want the twenty dollars?"
"And did I not——" then glancing at her half-mourning, "for the widow and the fatherless. I am traveling agent of the Widow and Orphan Asylum, recently founded among the Seminoles."
"And why did you not tell me your object before?" As not a little relieved. "Poor souls—Indians, too—those cruelly-used Indians. Here, here; how could I hesitate. I am so sorry it is no more." (8, 15-22)
The man in the grey-and-white suit really twists the emotional arm of this young widow's good intentions. All she wants to do is be friendly to this weird stranger who has sat down beside her. Instead, he majorly manipulates her kindness so that she'll pony up some cash. His strategy? He'll deny that she has any confidence in him at all, and then he'll demand she have more faith in him than she's willing to put into a stranger. He tops it all off with a strategic delay in telling her the reason he wants the money. By the time he reveals that he wants it so that he can make a donation, she's already been on a mini emo-rollercoaster. Her relief is that she suddenly doesn't have to worry about trusting him—she's just giving to charity. Right? Right?