"It—it's the way I scrimp, Harry. Another woman would spend it on clothes or—a servant—or matinées. It ain't hard for a home body like me to save, Harry."
He reached across the table for her wrist.
"Poor little soul," he said, "you don't see day-light."
"Let him go, Harry, if—if he wants it. I can manage the money."
His scowl returned, darkening him.
"No. A. E. Unger never seen the inside of a high school, much less a college, and I guess he's made as good a pile as most. I've worked for the butcher and the landlord all my life, and now I ain't going to begin being a slave to my boy. There's been two or three times in my life where, for want of a few dirty dollars to make a right start, I'd be, a rich man to-day. My boy's going to get that right start."
"But, Harry, college will—"
"I seen money in 'Pan-America' long before Unger ever dreamed of producing it. I sicked him onto 'The Official Chaperon' when every manager in town had turned it down. I went down and seen 'em doing 'The White Elephant' in a Yiddish theater and wired Unger out in Chicago to come back and grab it for Broadway. Where's it got me? Nowhere. Because I whiled away the best fifteen years of my life in an up-State burg, and then, when I came down here too late in life, got in the rut of a salaried man. Well, where it 'ain't got me it's going to get my son. I'm missing a chance, to-day that, mark my word, would make me a rich man but for want of a few—"
"Harry, you mean that?"
"My hunch never fails me."