It was the first money I ever remember having to spend, that half-crown of old Hasluck's; suggestions of the delights to be derived from a new pair of gloves for Sunday, from a Latin grammar, which would then be all my own, and so on, having hitherto displaced all less exalted visions concerning the disposal of chance coins coming into my small hands. But on this occasion I was left free to decide for myself.
The anxiety it gave me! the long tossing hours in bed! the tramping of the bewildering streets! Even advice when asked for was denied me.
“You must learn to think for yourself,” said my father, who spoke eloquently on the necessity of early acquiring sound judgment and what he called “commercial aptitude.”
“No, dear,” said my mother, “Mr. Hasluck wanted you to spend it as you like. If I told you, that would be spending it as I liked. Your father and I want to see what you will do with it.”
The good little boys in the books bought presents or gave away to people in distress. For this I hated them with the malignity the lower nature ever feels towards the higher. I consulted my aunt Fan.
“If somebody gave you half-a-crown,” I put it to her, “what would you buy with it?”
“Side-combs,” said my aunt; she was always losing or breaking her side-combs.
“But I mean if you were me,” I explained.
“Drat the child!” said my aunt; “how do I know what he wants if he don't know himself. Idiot!”
The shop windows into which I stared, my nose glued to the pane! The things I asked the price of! The things I made up my mind to buy and then decided that I wouldn't buy! Even my patient mother began to show signs of irritation. It was rapidly assuming the dimensions of a family curse, was old Hasluck's half-crown.