"Just because she's a girl," complained Randolph loudly, indicating Laura, "she always wants to be queen."
"It isn't because I'm a girl," broke in Laura, panting. "It's because it's fair. Boys never want to be fair, Uncle Ranny, that's what's the matter. He's been king for half an hour and he always wants us to do impossible things so he can be king forever."
"And I want to be king, too," loudly proclaimed Jimmie.
I suppressed the nascent revolt as best I could and soothed the passions of pretenders. I reminded them that this was a democracy and that royalty in our land could count only upon a visitor's welcome.
"Aw, don't I know?" said Randolph fiercely. "I wouldn't be really truly king for anything."
It was a pleasure to me to enter from the turmoil of the outer world to this playing fountain of affectionate young life. Jimmie, Laura, Randolph, little glimmers of spark-like personality were fitfully flickering over their childish heads and it was my task to turn them into steady flames. That was what I owed to my sister Laura and that was the course upon which I was irrevocably embarked. But now, alone in my study, I still hear in the hum and rumor of the streets the insistent imperative cry, Pay your way! Pay your way!
CHAPTER VIII
The incredible has happened. No, not the incredible. The incredible is always happening. It is the impossible that has taken place.
I, Randolph Byrd, am now a business man—no priest of the temple, but a brazen money-changer as ever was.
The hum and the noise and rattle of it are perpetually in my ears like the whirr of machinery in the brain of the factory hand. I cannot think or put myself in the moods of thought. The sound of the ticker is constantly in my head, and my nerves crave movement.