with a pencil.
"How much for that beautiful bird for my father?"
He had swallowed strenuously and this time got out the words cleanly.
"Well, now, I don't hardly know. My Bertha had her cousin give her that bird. It's a costly bird. I guess you couldn't pay such a price. I guess it would cost a full half dollar, mebbe."
He had meant the price to be prohibitive, and it did shock the questioner, opulent though he was.
"Well, mebbe I will and mebbe I won't," he said, importantly. "Say, you keep him for me till I make my mind up. If anybody else comes along, don't you sell him to anybody else till I tell you, because prob'ly I'll simply buy him. My father, he loves animals."
Solly Gumble was impressed.
"Well, he's a first-class animal. He's been in that one place goin' on five years now."
"Give me two of those and two of those and one of them," said the Wilbur twin, pointing to new heart's desires.
"Say, now, you got a lot of money for a little boy," said Solly Gumble, not altogether at ease. This might be a case of embezzlement such as he had before known among his younger patrons. "You sure it's yours—yes?"
"Ho!" The Wilbur twin scorned the imputation. He was not going to tell how he had earned this wealth, but the ease of his simple retort was enough for the practical psychologist before him. "I could buy all the things in this store if I wanted to," he continued, and waved a patronizing hand to the shelves. "Give me two of those and two of those and one of them."
Solly Gumble put the latest purchase in a paper bag. Here was a patron worth conciliating. The patron sauntered to the open door to eat of his provender with lordly ease in the sight of an envious world. Calmly elate, on the cushion of advantage, he scanned the going and coming of lesser folk who could not buy at will of Solly Gumble. His fortune had gone to his head, as often it has overthrown the reason of the more mature indigent. It was thus his brother found him, and became instantly troubled at what seemed to be the insane glitter of his eyes.
He engulfed an entire chocolate mouse from his sticky left hand and with his right proffered the bag containing two of those and two of those and one of them. Merle accepted the boon silently. He was thrilled, yet distrustful. Until now his had been the leading mind, but his power was gone. He resented this, yet was sensible that no resentment must be shown. His talent as a tactician was to be sorely tested. He gently tried out this talent.
"Winona says you ought to come home to dinner."
The magnate replied as from another world.
"I couldn't eat a mouthful," he said, and crowded a cocoanut cream into an oral cavity already distended by a chocolate mouse.
"She says, now, you should save your money and buy some useful thing with it," again ventured the parasite. It was the sign of a nicely sensed acumen that he no longer called it "our" money.
"Ho! Gee, gosh!" spluttered the rich one, and that was all.
"What we going to have next?" demanded the wise one.
"I'll have to think up something." He did not invite suggestions and none were offered. Merle nicely sensed the arrogance of the newly rich. "I know," said the capitalist at length—"candy in a lemon."
"One for each?"
"Of course!" It was no time for petty economies.
Solly Gumble parted with two lemons and two sticks of spirally striped candy of porous fabric. Then the moneyed gourmet dared a new flight.
"Two more sticks," he commanded. "You suck one stick down, then you put another in the same old lemon," he explained.
"I must say!" exclaimed Merle. It was a high moment, but he never used strong language.
When the candy had been imbedded in the lemons they sauntered out to the street, Merle meekly in the rear, the master mind still coerced by brute wealth. They paused before other shop windows, cheeks hollowed above the savory mechanism invented by Patricia Whipple. Down one side of River Street to its last shop, and up the other, they progressed haltingly. At many of the windows the capitalist displayed interest only of the most academic character. At others he made sportive threats. Thus before the jewellery shop of Rapp Brothers he quite unnerved Merle by announcing that he could buy everything in that window if he wanted to—necklaces and rings and pins and gold watches—and he might do this. If, say, he did buy that black marble clock with the prancing gold horse on it, would Merle take it home for him? He had no intention of buying this object—he had never found clocks anything but a source of annoyance—but he toyed with the suggestion when he saw that it agitated his brother. Thereafter at other windows he wilfully dismayed his brother by pretending to consider the purchase of objects in no sense desirable to any one, such as boots, parasols, manicure sets, groceries, hardware. He played with the feel of his wealth, relishing the power it gave him over the moneyless.
And then purely to intensify this thrill of power he actually purchased at the hardware shop and carelessly bestowed upon the mendicant brother an elaborate knife with five blades and a thing which the vender said was to use in digging stones out of horses' feet. Merle was quite overcome by this gift, and neither of them suspected it to be the first step in the downfall of the capitalist. The latter, be it remembered, had bought and bestowed the knife that he might feel more acutely his power over this penniless brother, and this mean reward was abundantly his. Never before had he felt superior to the Merle twin.
But the penalties of giving are manifold, and he now felt a novel glow of sheer beneficence. He was a victim to the craze for philanthropy. Too young to realize its insidious character, he was to embark upon a ruinous career. Ever it is the first step that costs. That carelessly given knife—with something to dig stones out of a horse's foot—was to wipe out, ere night again shrouded Newbern Center, a fortune supposed to be as lasting as the eternal hills that encircled it.
They again crossed River Street, and stopped in front of the Cut-Rate Pharmacy. The windows of this establishment offered little to entice save the two mammoth chalices of green and crimson liquor. But these were believed to be of fabulous value. Even the Cut-Rate Pharmacy itself could afford but one of each. Inside the door a soda fountain hissed provocatively. They took lemon and vanilla respectively, and the lordly purchaser did not take up his change from the wet marble until he had drained his glass. He had become preoccupied. He was mapping out a career of benevolence, splendid, glittering, ostentatious—ruinous.
In a show case near the soda fountain his eye rested upon an object of striking beauty, a photograph album of scarlet plush with a silver clasp, and lest its purpose be misconstrued the word "Album" writ in purest silver across its front. Negotiations resulting in its sale were brief. The Merle twin was aghast, for the cost of this thing was a dollar and forty-nine cents. Even the buyer trembled when he counted out the price in small silver and coppers. But the result was a further uplift raising him beyond the loudest call of caution. The album was placed in the ornate box—itself no mean bibelot—and wrapped in paper.
"It's for Winona," the purchaser loftily explained to his white-faced brother.
"I must say!" exclaimed the latter, strongly moved.
"I'm going to buy a beautiful present for every one," added the now fatuous giver.
"Every one!" It was all Merle could manage, and even it caused him to gulp.
"Every one," repeated the hopeless addict.
And even as he said it he was snared again, this time by an immense advertising placard propped on the counter. It hymned the virtues of the Ajax Invigorator. To the left sagged a tormented male victim of many ailments meticulously catalogued below, but in too fine print for offhand reading by one in a hurry. The frame of the sufferer was bent, upheld by a cane, one hand poignantly resting on his back. The face was drawn with pain and despair. "For twenty years I suffered untold agonies," this person was made to confess in large print. It was heartrending. But opposite the moribund wretch was a figure of rich health, erect, smartly