Daisy curtsied demurely. “G’by. Thank you for a wunnaful time, Laurence,” she said; and went out of the house with a character that had changed permanently during the brief course of a children’s party.
As for Laurence, he had been through a dog’s time; and he showed it. Every night, after he said his bedside prayers, there was an additional rite his mother had arranged for him; he was to say: “I know that I have a character, and I know that I am a soul.” But to-night he balked.
“Go on,” his mother bade him. “Say it, Laurence.”
“I doe’ want to,” he said dully.
Mrs. Coy sighed. “I don’t know what’s the matter with you: you behave so queerly sometimes! Don’t you know you ought to appreciate what your mamma does for you—when she went to all the trouble to give you a nice party just to make you happy? Oughtn’t you to do what she wants you to, to pay her for all that happiness?”
“I guess so.” The poor child somehow believed it—but as he went through his formula and muttered that he knew he had a character, it is probable that he felt a strong doubt in the matter. This may have caused his aversion to saying it.
THE ONE-HUNDRED-DOLLAR BILL
THE new one-hundred-dollar bill, clean and green, freshening the heart with the colour of springtime, slid over the glass of the teller’s counter and passed under his grille to a fat hand, dingy on the knuckles, but brightened by a flawed diamond. This interesting hand was a part of one of those men who seem to have too much fattened muscle for their clothes: his shoulders distended his overcoat; his calves strained the sprightly checked cloth, a little soiled, of his trousers; his short neck bulged above the glossy collar. His hat, round and black as a pot, and appropriately small, he wore slightly obliqued; while under its curled brim his small eyes twinkled surreptitiously between those upper and nether puffs of flesh that mark the too faithful practitioner of unhallowed gaieties. Such was the first individual owner of the new one-hundred-dollar bill, and he at once did what might have been expected of him.
Moving away from the teller’s grille, he made a cylindrical packet of bills smaller in value—“ones” and “fives”—then placed round them, as a wrapper, the beautiful one-hundred-dollar bill, snapped a rubber band over it; and the desired inference was plain: a roll all of hundred-dollar bills, inside as well as outside. Something more was plain, too: obviously the man’s small head had a sportive plan in it, for the twinkle between his eye-puffs hinted of liquor in the offing and lively women impressed by a show of masterly riches. Here, in brief, was a man who meant to make a night of it; who would feast, dazzle, compel deference, and be loved. For money gives power, and power is loved; no doubt he would be loved. He was happy, and went out of the bank believing that money is made for joy.