“I think you wish to know what I am, and so I want to answer your questions as truthfully and as quickly as I can.”
“How much money have you got that you can call your own?” asked Thompson. He showed more curiosity now than at any other time in their interview.
Tommy looked at Thompson's chubby, good-natured face and the steady eyes. “I borrowed fifty dollars from friends to come out here with. But I had this.” He put his hand in his inside pocket where his mother's gift was. Then he brought out his hand—empty.
“Yes?” said Thompson. There was an insistence in his voice that perplexed Tommy, almost irritated him.
“It's—I think' it is—a hundred dollars my mother—” Tommy paused.
“I thought you had no mother?” Thompson raised his eyebrows and looked puzzled rather than suspicious.
Tommy impulsively took from his pocket the little package of gold coins—the only money he could take from his father. He hesitated. Finally he said: “I haven't opened it. Would you like to know what it is?”
“Please!” said Thompson, gently.
Tommy decided to tell everything and go away, having learned a lesson—not to talk too much about himself. “My mother died when I was born. An uncle gave her a hundred dollars in gold. She saved it for me. She wrote on it, 'For Tommy's first scrape.' I haven't opened it. I don't want to. I'm in no scrape yet. But that's all I have that's mine, and—”
Thompson rose to his feet and held out his hand. His face was beaming with good will. Tommy took the hand mechanically and instantly felt the warm friendliness in Thompson's grasp.