"A brother'll do. A grandmother'd do. If you can't bait your hook with a feather fly, you can take a bit of worm. But once a fella like you begins to take a shine to one of them...."
"Shine to one of them! Me?"
"Well, I suppose you'll be taking a shine to some girl some day. Why shouldn't you?"
"If I was going to do that...."
The point at which he suspended his sentence was that which piqued her especially. Her eyes were provocative; her bright face alert.
"Well, if you were going to do that—what of it?"
The minute was one he was trying to evade. As clearly as if he were fifty, he knew the folly of getting himself involved in an emotional entanglement. Though he looked a young man, he was only a big boy. The most serious part of his preparation for life lay just ahead of him. If he didn't go to college....
And even more pressing than that consideration was the fact that in bringing Maisie to The Cherry Tree that afternoon he had come down to his last fifteen cents. At the beginning of their acquaintance he had had seven dollars and a half, hoarded preciously for needs connected with his education. Maisie had stampeded the whole treasure. To expect a man to spend money on her was as instinctive to Maisie as it is to a flower to expect the heavens to send rain. She knew that at each mention of the movies or The Cherry Tree Tom squirmed in the anguish of financial disability, and that from the very hint of love he bolted like a colt from the bridle; but when it came to what she considered as her due she was pitiless.
No epic has yet been written on the woes of the young man trying, on twenty-five dollars a week, let us say, to play up to the American girl's taste for spending money. His self-denials, his sordid shifts, his mortifications, his sense at times that his most unselfish efforts have been scorned, might inspire a series of episodes as tensely dramatic as those of Spoon River.
Tom had had one such experience on Maisie's birthday. She had talked so much of her birthday that a present became indispensable. To meet this necessity the extreme of his expenditure could be no more than fifty cents. To find for fifty cents something worthy of a lady already a connoisseur he ransacked Boston. Somewhere he had heard that a present might be modest so long as it was the best thing of its kind. The best thing of its kind he discovered was a toothbrush. It was not a common toothbrush except for the part that brushed the teeth. The handle was of mother-of-pearl, with an inlay in red enamel. The price was forty-five cents.