“Pieces of eight!” I whispered.
But they were not. When I had winked the mist out of my eyes I found that they were old-fashioned coppers—bung-downs they used to be called. Mixed in with them were a few copper tokens, a Pine Tree shilling, a sprinkling of Speed The Plow cents, and the only coin of any account at all was a Mexican dollar with a hole in it.
It wasn’t in my nature to bury that treasure. I knew it was pretty worthless junk, but I had a hankering to carry it about with me, to feel its drag in my pockets, to reach in and chink it when no one could hear. I walked around weighted with it as afterward I have been weighted with the leaden chunks of my diver’s dress. As early as that in my life I found that money was a burden as well as a vexation. I didn’t dare to frisk and frolic with the boys at school; I was not exploiting my new wealth; I had grounds for caution because there were plenty of Pratts left in Levant. At home I moved about so quietly that my folks thought, I reckon, that I was entering an early decline. My mother used to look at my tongue quite often and made me drink hardhack tea.
But there is one impulse in the male animal which is not easily controlled by prudence; it’s that cursed itch to make a show in front of the female of the species—in front of the special one, the selected one, the beloved one. Some sort of a jimcrack-peddler came into the school-yard one noon, and Celene Kingsley, daughter of a plutocrat, tendered a big, shiny silver dollar and the man could not change it for her. I walked up, trembling with both pride and panic, and said, trying my best to act the part of a matter-of-fact bank on two legs, “Let me handle it for you!” It was the first time I had ever spoken to her, and my voice was only a weak squawk.
When she turned to me and opened her big, blue eyes, I was nigh to running away.
The boys and girls came crowding around, and I couldn’t blame them for showing interest; the sight of a Levant Sidney with money on him was a new one in town.
I had separated from the coppers the aristocrats of my hoard, the Pine Tree shilling and the Mexican dollar, by wrapping them in a wisp of paper. I brought them out first.
“I don’t know exactly what they are worth in real money,” I told her. “But you can have ’em at half price.”
She had been considerably surprised before, but now she was plain dumfounded. That system of changing a dollar was brand new.
Then I dredged a trousers pocket and produced a handful of the bung-down coppers. I began to count them down on a corner of the school-house steps.