The Wall Street Girl

“I suppose,” mused Pendleton, Jr., “I suppose it was that freshman scrape that worried him.”

“I was not informed of that,” replied Barton.

“It made good reading,” the young man confided. “But, honest, it was not so bad as the papers made it out. Dad was a good sport about it, anyhow. He cleared it up and let me go on.”

“If you will allow me to advance an opinion,–a strictly personal opinion,–it is that Mr. Pendleton devised the entire will with nothing else but your welfare in mind. He had a good deal of pride, and desired above all things to have you retain the family home. If I remember correctly, he said you were the last lineal descendant.”

Don nodded pleasantly.

“The last. Kind of looks as if he wanted me to remain the last.”

“On the contrary,” ventured Barton, “I think he hoped you might marry and–”

“Marry?” broke in Don. “Did you say marry?”

“I even understood, from a conversation with your father just before his death, that you–er–were even then engaged. Am I mistaken?”

“No; that’s true enough. But say–look here.”

The young man reached in his pocket and brought forth a handful of crumpled bills and loose change. He counted it carefully.

“Twelve dollars and sixty-three cents,” he announced. “What do you think Frances Stuyvesant will say to that?”

Barton refrained from advancing an opinion.

“What do you think Morton H. Stuyvesant will say?” demanded Don.

No point of law being involved in the query, Jonas Barton still refrained.

“What do you think Mrs. Morton H. Stuyvesant will say, and all the uncles and aunties and nephews and nieces?”

“Not being their authorized representative, I am not prepared to answer,” Barton replied. “However, I think I can tell you what your father would do under these circumstances.”

“What?” inquired Don.

“He would place all the facts in the case before the girl, then before her father, and learn just what they had to say.”

“Wrong. He wouldn’t go beyond the girl,” answered Don.

He replaced the change in his pocket.

“Ah,” he sighed–“them were the happy days.”

“If I remember correctly,” continued Jonas Barton thoughtfully, “twelve dollars and sixty-three cents was fully as much as your father possessed when he asked your mother to marry him. That was just after he lost his ship off Hatteras.”

“Yes, them were the happy days,” nodded Don. “But, at that, Dad had his nerve with him.”

“He did,” answered Barton. “He had his nerve with him always.”

CHAPTER II

IT BECOMES NECESSARY TO EAT

In spite of the continued efforts of idealists to belittle it, there is scarcely a fact of human experience capable of more universal substantiation than that in order to live it is necessary to eat. The corollary is equally true: in order to eat it is necessary to pay.

Yet until now Pendleton had been in a position to ignore, if not to refute, the latter statement. There was probably no detail of his daily existence calling for less thought or effort than this matter of dining. Opportunities were provided on every hand,–at the houses of his friends, at his club, at innumerable cafés and hotels,–and all that he was asked to contribute was an appetite.

It was not until he had exhausted his twelve dollars and sixty-three cents that Don was in any position to change his point of view. But that was very soon. After leaving the office of Barton & Saltonstall at eleven, he took a taxi to the Harvard Club, which immediately cut down his capital to ten dollars and thirteen cents. Here he met friends, Higgins and Watson and Cabot of his class, and soon he had disposed of another dollar. They then persuaded him to walk part way downtown with them. On his return, he passed a florist’s, and, remembering that Frances was going that afternoon to a thé dansant, did the decent thing and sent up a dozen roses, which cost him five dollars. Shortly after this he passed a confectioner’s, and of course had to stop for a box of Frances’s favorite bonbons, which cost him another dollar.

Not that he considered the expense in the least. As long as he was able to reach in his pocket and produce a bill of sufficient value to cover the immediate investment, that was enough. But it is surprising how brief a while ten dollars will suffice in a leisurely stroll on Fifth Avenue. Within a block of the confectionery store two cravats that took his fancy and a box of cigarettes called for his last bill, and actually left him with nothing but a few odd pieces of silver. Even this did not impress him as significant, because, as it happened, his wants were for the moment fully satisfied.

It was a clear October day, and, quite unconscious of the distance, Don continued up the Avenue to Sixtieth Street–to the house where he was born. In the last ten years he had been away a good deal from that house,–four years at Groton, four at Harvard,–but, even so, the house had always remained in the background of his consciousness as a fixed point.

Nora opened the door for him, as she had for twenty years.

“Are you to be here for dinner, sir?” she inquired.

“No, Nora,” he answered; “I shall dine out to-night.”

Nora appeared uneasy.

“The cook, sir, has received a letter–a very queer sort of letter, sir–from a lawyer gentleman.”

“Eh?”

“He said she was to keep two accounts, sir: one for the servants’ table and one for the house.”

“Oh, that’s probably from old Barton.”

“Barton–yes, sir, that was the name. Shall I bring you the letter, sir?”

“Don’t bother, Nora. It’s all right. He’s my new bookkeeper.”

“Very well, sir. Then you’ll give orders for what you want?”

“Yes, Nora.”

In the library an open fire was burning brightly on the hearth, as always it had been kept burning for his father. With his hands behind his back, he stood before it and gazed around the big room. It seemed curiously empty with the old man gone. The machinery of the house as adjusted by him still continued to run on smoothly. And yet, where at certain hours he should have been, he was not. It was uncanny.

It was a little after one; Don determined to change his clothes and stroll downtown for luncheon–possibly at Sherry’s. He was always sure there of running across some one he knew.

He went to his room and dressed with some care, and then walked down to Forty-fourth Street. Before deciding to enter the dining-room, however, he stood at the entrance a moment to see if there was any one there he recognized. Jimmy Harndon saw him and rose at once.

“Hello, Jimmy,” Don greeted him.

“Hello, Don. You came in the nick of time. Lend me ten, will you?”

“Sure,” answered Don.