"Won't your ring and scarf pin do?" his wife inquired anxiously of Mr. Wallingford. A "collection," in their parlance, meant the sacrifice of a last resource, and she was a woman of experience.
"You know they won't," he returned in mild reproach. "If I don't keep a front I know where my ticket reads to; the first tank!"
Without any further objection she brought him a little black leather case, which he opened. An agreeable glitter sparkled from its velvet depths, and he passed it to his friend with a smile of satisfaction.
"They'll please Uncle, eh, Blackie?" he observed. "The first thing to do, after I cash these, is to look at the map and pick out a fresh town where smart people have money in banks. It always helps a lot to remember that somewhere in this big United States people have been saving up coin for years, just waiting for us to come and get it."
The two men laughed, but Mrs. Wallingford did not.
"Honest, I'm tired of it," she confessed. "If this speculation of Jim's had only turned out luckily I wanted to buy a little house and live quietly and—and decently for a year or so."
Mr. Daw glanced at her in amusement.
"She wants to be respectable!" he gasped in mock surprise.
"All women do," she said, still earnestly.
"You wouldn't last three months," he informed her. "You'd join the village sewing circle and the culture club, and paddle around in a giddy whirl of pale functions till you saw you had to keep your mouth shut all the time for fear the other women would find out you knew something. Then you'd quit."