"No, Sir!" emphatically and indignantly replied the prodigal.
"Then we're lost!" exclaimed all four, and Hough continued, "Had you been a tramp I'd have given you a dollar."
The prodigal looked surprised—a trifle suspicious. For the first time in his life he found his vagabondage quoted at a premium.
"Gentlemen," he said, "pardon me if my native modesty prompted me to deny the truth. I will confess that, having spent my substance in assisting the miseries of others, I am, through the fault of my own generosity and moral rectitude, at last brought to that sad phase of mortal existence comprehended by the name "tramp." I am a tramp—and I do not say it boastingly—; Heaven forbid!" And with a smile of ineffable sweetness, in which dirt and "native modesty" were harmoniously blended, the prodigal meekly folded his hands and rolled his eyes skywards.
"Found, at last!" exclaimed all.
The incidents of this chapter occurred one sunny August afternoon, on the lawn in front of Smythe's summer cottage on Long Island Sound, not far from the lovely little village of Greenwich.
Smythe's cottage was a pretty little piece of carpenter work in the Swiss chatelet style—so delightfully expensive and romantic.
Algernon Smythe was the son of his father. A clear understanding of this matter is necessary inasmuch as the ancestral Smythes bore the name of Smith, and the one immediately preceding Algernon had his "Smith" decorated with the prefix Josiah. Josiah Smith drifted away from the cobble stones of Connecticut—where the Smith family had long been at warfare with the rocks about the possession of a few acres of sterile, sorrel-trodden, ground,—at an early age, and found his way to New York City. With him came the customary solitary shilling. But this Smith shilling was an inflationist. It swelled itself into houses and lots, and stocks and bonds, and shaved notes and fore-closed mortgages, and fifty per cent. premiums on seven per cent. loans, and kept itself so busily employed that when Josiah Smith retired from active life and took up a permanent residence in Greenwood, his only son and heir found himself sole master of a million of money. This was too much wealth to be comfortably worn by the name of Smith. Why, Algernon could remember when he was a little fellow, sanding sugar and dusting spices in his father's store, familiar little boys,—who were manœuvering for raisins,—used to affectionately call him "Smiffy!"
As a consequence when Algernon returned from Paris (Pahree he called it) he no longer intruded the private "i" into the public eye, but put a "y" in place of it. Then, that his name might be parted in the middle,—to match his hair,—he tapered off the "i"-less creation with an "e"; adopted a coat of arms; selected a motto; wanted to know if Connecticut was not somewhere in Massachusetts "you know"; always said brava! at the opera; and bought him a yacht!
Of the other guests at the cottage; Mr. Hough was the relative appendage of a City Savings Bank. He drew $3,500 per annum from the bank and several thousand from other sources. Mr. Wasson was generally supposed to be an artist. He was always going to have a picture finished for the next exhibition. "A thing that Church or Bierstadt might be proud of." Meanwhile a doting father, who, in a distant Massachusetts town, had first made shoes on his own knees, but now made them on the knees of some five hundred of his fellow men, kindly furnished him with a liberal means of subsistence until his profession was established on a paying basis.