I shall choke with pride, so august am I become in the Banca e Casa Commerciale Visconti.
I call up the National City Bank concerning the price of bonds, or the rate of exchange, in English so presumably impeccable that Signor Visconti visibly puffs out his magnificent chest as he listens. There is a divinity that shapes our "frontas", rough-hew them how we will.
"Visconti's speaking," I say with firmness and the head of Visconti's curls his fine dyed mustache and turns away, glowing with ill-concealed pleasure. This is seemingly what the head of Visconti's has been waiting for. Mentally I offer a fervent prayer that he may never be disillusioned as to my capacity.
I toil as I have never toiled before. I come early and go late and frequently have my lunch sent in from the adjoining delicatessen, powdered no doubt by the contiguous junk house, and the "boss", as the others call him, smiles with a rare unction that spells approval.
With difficulty we are actually living on my income. If I had the half of my capital back that I had no business to put into Salmon and Byrd—but ifs inaugurate depressing trains of thoughts. My library alone stands between me and disaster, so like a prudent man of business I have begun a catalogue of it and I am training Alicia to help me. I must not again be caught by so desperate a prospect as recently faced me.
How my little household had been affected by my late slough of despond I realize only now that I have passed it. Laughter and high spirits seem to have been uncorked again. We play and we rollic and chatter, more than in the early days of our vie de famille—how long ago is it?—something less than a year, no longer!
It is now the end of September and the schools have reopened. We are all sanely and industriously busy, like a normal American family, and as though its so-called head were an adequately competent being, and not the bungling masquerading amateur that he is. "Who never ate in tears his bread"—well, we have made intimate acquaintance of poverty and we fear it less than of yore—though we hate it more. It may be an impostor, but who maintains that all impostors are harmless? I certainly would deny that premise, so—we are cataloguing the library.
"Here is 'The Anatomy of Melancholy' by Burton," announces Alicia, taking down a volume.
"Small quarto, printed at Oxford, 1621," I finish for her.
"Yes," she breathes, marveling wide-eyed. "How can you remember such things, Uncle Ranny?" for so I have asked her to call me.