“Yes, but I've got a sister who—well, she isn't right. My father's fault.” He paused and corrected himself. “No, it wasn't. Just her luck. When she was a baby my father thought of something and he yelled to mother to tell her. And mother was frightened and dropped Charlotte. The fall did something to her. Anyhow, she's got what they call arrested development. She will never be able to amount to anything. So, of course, I—Well, it takes a big bite out of the pay envelope”; and he smiled defensively.
“Of course,” agreed Tommy with conviction. Then he irrepressibly held out his right hand toward Byrnes and said, nonchalantly, “Say, Bill, I've got a hundred I'm not using.”
“Keep it,” said Bill, shortly.
“It's yours,” Tommy contradicted, pleasantly. “Then keep on keeping it for me,” said Bill, and rose. He went toward his own room so quickly that Tommy did not have time to pursue the subject further. At the threshold Bill turned and said, “I'm much obliged, Tommy.”
“Wait!” said Tommy, going toward him. But Bill slammed the door in his face and locked it. It came to Tommy that Bill, too, had his cross to bear, and it was not of his own making—the sister for whom he must work, about whom he never talked. Yet Bill had shared his secret with Tommy, and Tommy couldn't share his with anybody! The more he thought about it the more he liked Bill. And the more he liked Bill the more he desired to help Bill in his experiments with the carburetor. It was a man's duty to help a friend. Tommy told himself so and agreed with himself.
He did not know that while his sense of duty was undergoing no deterioration, the equally strong desire for recreation, for something to make him forget his own trouble without resorting to cowardly or ignoble devices, insisted upon making itself felt. Then the thrilling thought came to him that besides helping Bill he was helping an inventor to do something useful, something that might be the means of accelerating the accumulation of the seventeen thousand dollars he needed. That made the loan strictly business, he thought, with the curious instinct of youth to cover the outside of a beautiful impulse with sordid motives, deeming that a more mature wisdom.
He had been sending three dollars a week regularly to his father. He had put it delicately enough. “Please credit me with the inclosed and write it down in the little black book. It's too one-sided as it is; too much Dr. and not enough Cr.” This was all that he had written to his father about his remittances. He had not asked what proportion of the debt was rightfully his. He would not stop to separate the clean dollars from the tainted, but give back the whole seventeen thousand. Nevertheless, he now wished to do something else with his mother's hundred, and the gold coins began to burn a hole in his pocket.
One night after supper he said to Bill, “I've been thinking about our experiments.” He paused to let the news sink in.
“Oh, you have, have you?” retorted Bill, with the elaborate sarcasm of the elder brother.
“Yep. Now if gasoline is going to keep on becoming less and less inflammable, what's the matter with going the whole hog and tackling kerosene?”