Where should they come from? They were there. We know that. They are gone. We have spent them ourselves.
But, during those drab days of poverty, we sit every morning over the empty drawer and talk long and profoundly about that painful phenomenon, which is so simple and so easy to understand and which one must needs make the best of.
And we hope and trust that our experience will do us good, when, after our trip, we start a new set of cents.
IX
My little boy is engaged to be married.
She is a big, large-limbed young woman, three years his senior, and no doubt belongs to the minor aristocracy. Her name is Gertie. By a misunderstanding, however, which is pardonable at his age and moreover quite explained by Gertie's appearance, he calls her Dirty—little Dirty—and by this name she will be handed down to history.
He met her on the boulevard, where he was playing, in the fine spring weather, with other children. His reason for the engagement is good enough:
"I wanted a girl for myself," he says.
Either I know very little of mankind or he has made a fortunate choice. No one is likely to take Dirty from him.
Like the gentleman that he is, he at once brings the girl home to us and introduces her. In consequence of the formality of the occasion, he does not go in by the kitchen way, as usual, but rings the front-door bell. I open the door myself. There he stands on the mat, hand in hand with Dirty, his bride, and, with radiant eyes: