“Try me! Boy myself once.”
A slow color shot up over Apollos’s classic torso, and flamed fiercely in his ears. He even became white around the mouth, as if the blood had receded from that part to concentrate in his listening apparatus. Then his confidence gushed forth, as if long pent up.
“I wanted some money to get my little sister a birthday present. She’d been ill in bed for five weeks, and was peevish as a wasp, driving Aunt Lise distracted asking for a big doll. Much as ever we could pay for the doctor and medicines, let alone a French doll, but I wanted to get it for her. She’s the only girl we have. Well, I was walking by Flatto’s one day, with Phineas, and I was fool enough to say I’d give my boots if I could get her a beauty doll we saw there in the window. ‘Gosh,’ says Phin, ‘I can tell you how you can earn that doll, on the side, without working.’ ‘How so?’ says I. ‘Well,’ says Phinny, ever so thoughtful, ‘a rich feller and I got talking about the way girls paint up their faces, and I said men sometimes did it too. He said rats, and I bet him ten I could prove it, and he took me up on it. I was thinking about the Academy exhibition,’ says Phinny, ‘and I knew Mr. Lucas was sending his self-portrait to the show. But now,’ says Phinny, ‘I’ve found out that portrait wasn’t accepted; and maybe my friend wouldn’t ante, just for a painted portrait, not a real person. But,’ says Phinny, very earnestly, ‘if I could get a regular feller, like you, to make up with paint, I’d give him half what I make; and that would net you the five plunks for the doll.’”
Apollos paused as if ashamed of “telling.” But his recollections were too much for him, and upon my encouragement, he went on.
“Well, I fell for it. I didn’t stop to think how it would look; I only knew the money would look good to me. And I knew Phinny was a little brother to the rich; some of his fool-friends just wallow in coin. So on the spur of the moment, we went round to Phin’s house for him to do me. He’s in with the set that do private theatricals, and he has all the stuff from a rabbit’s-foot down. I thought it would be funny if he would do my nose good and red; but, no, he just did my cheeks and ears, and blackened up my eyelashes, and we went right over to the Academy exhibition then and there, and met his fool-friend. One of the artists had given Phinny tickets on account of his ancestors. I had no idea what I looked like. People stared, of course, but I thought that was part of the programme.”
Evidently a very painful thought still lurked in Apollos’s mind.
“You got the money,” I remarked, casually.
“Oh, no.” Apollos rapidly wiggled all his ten toes. “I threw it back at him and told him to go to Hell with it.”
“For Heaven’s sake, why?”