“Father, I GOT to have one. I got to have one right away!” The urgency in William's voice was almost tearful. “I don't ask you to have it made, or to go to expensive tailors, but there's plenty of good ready-made ones that only cost about forty dollars; they're advertised in the paper. Father, wouldn't you spend just forty dollars? I'll pay it back when I'm in business; I'll work—”
Mr. Baxter waved all this aside. “It's not the money. It's the principle that I'm standing for, and I don't intend—”
“Father, WON'T you do it?”
“No, I will not!”
William saw that sentence had been passed and all appeals for a new trial denied. He choked, and rushed into the house without more ado.
“Poor boy!” his mother said.
“Poor boy nothing!” fumed Mr. Baxter. “He's about lost his mind over that Miss Pratt. Think of his coming out here and starting a regular debating society declamation before his mother and father! Why, I never heard anything like it in my life! I don't like to hurt his feelings, and I'd give him anything I could afford that would do him any good, but all he wants it for now is to splurge around in at this party before that little yellow-haired girl! I guess he can wear the kind of clothes most of the other boys wear—the kind I wore at parties—and never thought of wearing anything else. What's the world getting to be like? Seventeen years old and throws a fit because he can't have a dress-suit!”
Mrs. Baxter looked thoughtful. “But—but suppose he felt he couldn't go to the dance unless he wore one, poor boy—”
“All the better,” said Mr. Baxter, firmly. “Do him good to keep away and get his mind on something else.”
“Of course,” she suggested, with some timidity, “forty dollars isn't a great deal of money, and a ready-made suit, just to begin with—”