He interrupted me with a smile and these gently spoken words:
"Friends who wish to express their good-will in gifts are requested to consider the large an' elegant stock o' goods in the local ninety-nine-cent store. Everything from socks to sunbursts may be found there. Necklaces an' tiaras are not prohibited if guaranteed to be real ninety-nine-centers. These days nobody has cheap things. That makes them rare an' desirable. All diamonds should weigh at least half a pound. Smaller stones are too common. Everybody has them, you know. Why, the wife of the butcher's clerk is payin' fifty cents a week on a solitaire. Gold, silver, an' automobiles will be politely but firmly refused—too common, far too common! Nothin' is desired likely to increase envy or bank loans or other forms of contemporaneous crime in Pointview. We would especially avoid increasin' the risk an' toil of overworked an' industrious burglars. They have enough to do as it is—poor fellows—they hardly get a night's rest. Miss Betsey's home has already given 'em a lot o' trouble."
His humor had relieved its pressure in the deep, good-natured chuckle of the Yankee, as he strode up an' down the floor with both hands in his trousers pockets.
"Look at that ol' duffer," he went on, as he pointed at the stern features of grandpa Smead. "Wouldn't ye think he'd smile now an' then. Maybe he'll cheer up after I've lived here awhile."
He moved a couple of chairs to give him more room, an' went on:
"Now, there's Bill Warburton. I supposed he was a friend o' mine, but we had a fight in school, years ago, an' I guess he's never got over it. Anyhow, I caught him tryin' to slip an automobile on me—just caught him in time. There he was tryin' to rob me o' the use o' my legs an' about fifteen hundred a year for expenses an' build me up into a fat man with indigestion an' liver-complaint. I served an injunction on him.
"Another man has tried to make me the lifelong slave of a silver service. He'd gone down to Fifth Avenue an' ordered it, an' I suppose it would 'a' cost thousands. Tried to sneak it on me. Can ye think o' anything meaner? It would 'a' cost me a pretty penny for insurance an' storage the rest o' my life, an' then think of our—ahem—our poor children! Why, it would be as bad as a mortgage debt. Every time I left home I would have worried about that silver service; every time the dog barked at night I would have trembled in my bed for the safety o' the silver service; every time we had company I would have been afraid that somebody was goin' to scratch the silver service; an' when I saw a stranger in town, I would have said to myself: 'Ah, ha! it may be that he has heard of our silver service an' has come to steal it.' I would have begun to regard my servants an' many other people with dread an' suspicion. Why, once I knew a man who had a silver service, an' they carried it up three nights to the attic every night for fifty years. They figured that they'd walked eleven hundred miles up an' down stairs with the silver service in their hands. The thought that they couldn't take it with 'em hastened an' embittered their last days. Then the heirs learned that it wasn't genuine after all.
"Of course, I put another injunction upon that man. 'If we've ever done anything to you, forgive us,' I said, 'but please do not cripple us with gold or silver.'"
He stopped and put his hand upon my shoulder and continued:
"My young friend, if you would make us a gift, I wish it might be something that will give us pleasure an' not trouble, something that money cannot buy an' thieves cannot steal—your love an' good wishes to be ours as long as you live an' we live—at least. We shall need no token o' that but your word an' conduct."