XI
McHENRY WEIGHS ANCHOR
AFTER the matinée was over—the plot had concerned the squandering of a million dollars by a young man who thereby got a few additional millions from an eccentric uncle—McHenry and Sewall took their way across the Common toward the Esplanade.
"Pepper," said Sewall thoughtfully, "what would you do if you had as much as a million yourself?"
"Get a shine," said McHenry.
"No—seriously."
"Seriously?" repeated Pepper. "Impossible! I couldn't be serious if I had that much."
"Well, suppose we were just beating it along, as we are now, and a lawyer came up to us and told you one of your old reprobate ancestors had died in Hongkong and left you his wad. What would you do?"
"I'd stand right where I am and yell for a taxicab," said Pepper. "I'd drive out to Cambridge, and then I'd buy the machine and give it to the chauffeur for a tip. Then I'd get you a shine."
Sewall opened his mouth and closed it again in the irritated fashion of the majority of people who tried to pin McHenry down to facts.
"Money doesn't bother me much," continued Pepper. "I'm rather impartial, too, because I never have any."
"That's your fault. Your dad certainly sends you enough."
"No one man could ever send me enough, my dear young friend! He sends me about twice as much as he says he will, and that's about half what I want. As I said, money doesn't bother me. It's so blamed easy to get, if you know how. Take one of these six-best-seller authors, for instance—the lads who draw a quarter a word. He sits down and writes something like this: 'No,' she said, 'you can't kiss me—I'm insured!' Then he puts in a bill for two seventy-five! Or look at these real-estate sharks—all they do is to get options on some dump on a good street and sell it to widows and orphans. Or—or brokers. Say, that's a great business! They get you going and coming! It costs you money to buy stock, and it costs some more to sell it! But any scheme is a good scheme—only it's hard to get started. I tell you, Ted, making money isn't anywhere nearly as hard as keeping it!"
"Speaking of that—decided what you'll do when you get through? Not much longer to wait, is there?"
"Murder, no!" said McHenry. "Two more months! Why, I haven't decided exactly what I'll do."
"Really? I thought of course you'd go in with your father."
"So did I, but he's changed his mind. He says he thinks I ought to get some experience somewhere else first. Wants to be sure I'm not a loafer. I suppose that means I'll have to get a job in some joint on State Street at six a week and work my brains out."
"John Phillips says he's going to raise razor-back hogs down in Virginia," said Sewall. "That's a fine stunt for a Harvard man—manicuring shoats!"
"Yes, but think of the humanity of it, old top! It's kindness to dumb animals, and besides, if there weren't any Virginia ham, there wouldn't be any free lunch at the Parker House!"
"Monk Spinden," said Sewall dispassionately, "says his dad is going to give him thirty a week to start—he's going to travel all over the Middle West chasing advertising."
"Hope he catches it!" said McHenry.
They crossed Harvard Bridge and hurried through the sordid streets of Cambridgeport, slowing their pace automatically as soon as they emerged into the leaf- hung stretch of the avenue where the odors were less objectionable.
"Well," observed Sewall, "it's been all right to fool around here for four years, but I'll be pretty glad to begin something worth while. Just the same, I wish I felt as familiar with cash as you do. Sometimes it gives me the shivers to remember I've got to earn a living!"
"There's only one way to succeed," said Pepper sagely. "Keep your shirt on, and don't do too much work yourself. As a brilliant illustration—the men digging the subway get a dollar a day, and any one of 'em could lick both of us with one hand. But the lad who sat back and smoked his cigar and figured out how to build the subway—he's the one with the big roll!"
"Straight goods," insisted Sewall, as they came to the Square and headed for McHenry's room, "how much money do you honestly think you want to make?"
"Take the biggest ship in the world," returned Pepper promptly, "and fill it with needles, so full that one more needle would sink the ship, and wear every one of 'em down to the eye making bags to hold my wad—and I'd probably be just as indifferent as I am now!"
Sewall said nothing. What was the use in trying to coöperate on daydreams with a man who had an imagination like that?
In McHenry's study Monk Spinden was experimenting with the banjo.
"Wait a second!" he murmured to their salutations. "I can do the first four notes of 'Fair Harvard.' Wait a minute! By gosh, that isn't so rotten for a man who never tackled it before, is it?"
McHenry took the instrument away from him and put it behind the bookshelves.
"You come over and eat," he said severely. "You musical geniuses never take proper care of yourselves!"
"All right. There's some mail for you, though, and a note from the office. Terry just brought it over."
"Any news?" asked Sewall, as McHenry slit the envelope. "That little Ethiopian knows more about what's going on than anybody on the faculty!"
"Oh, he said there's some crazy new idea—regular prep-school stuff—about paying your bills before you get your degree—"
"Holy mackerel!" bawled McHenry suddenly. "Well, what do you know about that!"
"What's the trouble, Pep?"
"Trouble!" He rammed his hands deep in his pockets, and glowered at them. "Trouble! Why—why, a couple of the pin-headed tightwad ginks around the square I owe money to have complained to the office!"
Sewall and Spinden exchanged quick glances.
"Why, Pep," said Spinden, "that's rotten! Didn't you hear what Terry told me?"
"I wasn't listening."
"He said there's a brilliant scheme to make fellows clean up all their bills in the square before they can take their degrees."
"You do the worrying," interpolated Sewall. "That's easy. All Pep has to do is to write home, and his dad sends him another barrel of bonds. The only thing is that it was pretty cheap of those people to tell the office."
McHenry, whistling savagely, opened his second letter. Shortly afterward he turned his eyes to the ceiling and emitted an exclamation which, if translated into English, would be unprintable. As Spinden said later, it was the most profane sound without words ever produced in a civilized community.
"More trouble?" inquired the tactless Sewall.
McHenry swallowed two or three times, filled his worst pipe with some dusty tobacco, burned his fingers with a safety match, and so arrived at coherence.
"Merely nothing," he sniffed. "Oh, absolutely nothing at all. Every year I've been a few hundred in the hole when college was over, and dad always gave me a check. I thought I'd anticipate it this year by a couple of months. Here's his answer. He says he's financed me for twenty-two years, and it's about time for me to pay my own debts! In other words—"
"You're stung!" gasped Spinden.
McHenry smoked stolidly.
"I must owe five or six hundred dollars altogether. Dad says he doesn't expect to send me another sou! Regular dad stuff. Get out and make good, pay my bills, and feel like a prince! Shucks! Prince is a dog's name! How the mischief can I raise six hundred dollars two months from Commencement? Everybody who isn't broke is tightwadding it for Class Day!"
"You could sell your runabout?"
"No, I couldn't. My family'd never forget it."
"Don't you suppose if you wrote home and explained things, your father might shoot along a little check?"
"You don't know him. On the contrary, he'd say it served me right."
"Pepper!" said Sewall abruptly.
"Spring it."
"Remember what you said on the way out here about how easy it is to make money?"
"Yes, but—"
"Well, here's a mighty good chance to prove it. You say it's a cinch. So go on and make some!"
"I could do it if I wanted to," said Pepper.
"You could, could you?"
"I certainly could."
"Not without borrowing from somebody?"
"Absolutely."
"Not without selling off some of your junk, or hocking your watch?"
"I sure could."
"In two months?"
"In two weeks," said Pepper sweetly.
"For how much?"
"I'll bet fifty—"
"You're on," said Sewall.
"Take you," said Spinden.
McHenry sat down to meditate.
"You fellows never take into consideration," he said, "the fact that it's ridiculously easy to make money. Why, you can make it out of almost anything."
"Excuse me, Pepper, but you're raving," yawned Sewall.
"No, I'm not. Why—why, a man with any brains can make money selling collar buttons."
"You couldn't make thirty cents selling collar buttons," scoffed Spinden. "Let's eat."
"On the whole," mused Pepper, "that's rather clever. It certainly is. There's real money in it. I suppose I might as well make six hundred in collar buttons as in anything else."
"If you'd promise to play fair, I'd take a shot—"
"I'll bet you fifty more I can make six hundred dollars selling collar buttons inside of a month—"
"Taken," said Sewall.
"You're on," said Spinden.
McHenry removed tie and collar and began to unfasten his shirt.
"Here," said Spinden. "Don't change your clothes. We're going right out to eat."
"I'm with you, old top," promised McHenry. "I won't keep you three minutes—I just want to see how they go to work to make these collar buttons."
II
As a matter of fact, he couldn't have borrowed money if he had tried. Parents are notably suspicious near the end of senior year; and, as Pepper had remarked, those men who weren't in financial straits were already hoarding against Class Day. It was out of the question to dispose of his furniture and accessories, partly because he still needed them, and partly because the spring is no season for putting second-hand furniture on the market in Cambridge. The coming crop of freshmen isn't yet in evidence, and last year's crop has matured.
McHenry visited U4, held a brief but spirited argument with the visible exponent of temporal authority, and returned to his room much chastened in spirit. The university had noted with horror the laxity of morals displayed by late classes with regard to the payment of bills, and intended to exercise some slight supervision over the graduating class. Men in arrears to the amount of three hundred dollars or more must furnish satisfactory evidence of payment before the sheepskins would be handed out.
McHenry wrote a wonderfully diplomatic letter home, hinting at all sorts of dire mishaps which had befallen him; and received by return mail a second epistle from his father to the effect that if Pepper owed money, he had better make arrangements to pay it as soon as possible.
McHenry sighed dolefully, revised his estimate of his influence with various parties, and began to think. In spite of his apparent attitude of indifference to the conventions of college, he would consider himself hopelessly and eternally disgraced if he left it without his diploma. He knew that if he simply had to acquire by his own efforts the sum of six hundred dollars in order to obtain that diploma, he could do it.
That was purely incidental. Nevertheless, it was his father's judgment which had sent him to Cambridge; and if he should fail for any reason whatsoever to take his degree, it would be his father's judgment which would be compromised. For himself, he had wagered, in cold anger, that he could accumulate the required amount by the sale of one of the commonest and cheapest and least speculative articles of masculine attire; and if he failed to accumulate it, the stain would be on his own judgment, and his alone.
That was what hurt him most. He had made a rash and childish statement, backed it, as he usually backed his wildest statements, with the solid support of a bet; and it was his proudest boast that he had never lost a bet when it hinged upon some action of his own. Having committed himself to sell collar buttons, he resolved to sell them.
His friends said he was slightly affected by the heat; and when any man made that remark in Pepper's presence it meant another annotation in the memorandum book, and another bit of allowance risked on the ingenuity of McHenry.
The most astonishing feature of the campaign was that it didn't seem to deprive Cambridge of his society. To be sure, he spent a morning and two or three afternoons in Boston, but after that he lounged about his customary haunts in customary idleness; and to all requests for information on the subject of getting rich quickly, he replied that he was a thinker, not a worker, and that salaried, servile minions were taking care of the detail.
The curiosity of his closest friends was so great, and their indignation at his reticence was so acute, that Spinden and Roger Ward undertook one day to shadow him to town and discover for themselves the field of his activities.
Without particular difficulty, they trailed him to the Bow Street garage, distant about a hundred yards from his dormitory, whence he sped quickly, a moment later, in the battered runabout which had now seen two years' service, but still served to remind them that if they hadn't formed the Prohibition Club, McHenry would yet be riding in trolley cars.
They tried to flag him, but he squawked at them with his Klaxon, and disappeared down the avenue, disgorging oil, regurgitating smoke, and exhaling a fearful odor of burned gas at every revolution of the wheels.
Spinden and Ward looked at each other in vast discomfiture.
"Well, we're regular detectives, anyway," said Spinden. "We didn't find out a darned thing."
"Yes, we did," contradicted Ward. "He must have got some money somewhere, or he couldn't have taken the boat out of the garage. Don't you know he owed 'em a hundred, and they wouldn't let go of the machine until he paid up?"
"A hundred!" ejaculated Spinden. "Well, if he's made as much as a hundred in a few days—"
"That's what I was thinking," said Ward uneasily. "I've got twenty on that proposition myself."
On the following morning they interrogated him, maintaining that it was cruelty of the most refined sort for him to wear such a smug expression to lectures, and to grin so sickening whenever some one spoke to him in a respectful and gentlemanly manner.
"I'll tell you this much," said McHenry, "I've discovered a whale of a big idea. It's worth so much that I don't know whether I ought to tell it to a couple of simps like you or not. Well, it's just this: you understand all about this supply and demand stuff, don't you? Of course you do—we all got scared into taking Ec One together. Well, when you want to sell something, you get the supply, and then get the demand. That's all."
"Get the demand! Come closer, Pep, come closer!"
"Create it, if you have to," explained McHenry. As, for example, we all know perfectly well that little children don't moan in their trundle beds because papa doesn't wear some special brand of collar buttons, don't we? And nobody lies writhing on a bed of pain until the doctor writes a telegram for a new supply of the things—and a man doesn't go and buy a collar button the way he does a cigar, or a drink, either. So—when I got into this fool scheme with you people, I naturally had to go and create a demand. Incidentally, I did!"
"I wish I thought you're a liar, Pep!" complained Spinden. "The trouble with you is that I'm always afraid you're telling the truth."
McHenry grinned, and brought from the drawer of his desk two envelopes.
"I haven't opened these yet," he said, "but I guess I know what's in 'em. You can look if you want to."
Accordingly they looked; and they found two receipted bills, one from the haberdashery where Pepper bought the most outrageous novelties in Cambridge; the other from the garage. The total amount involved was considerably over two hundred dollars.
"You don't mean to say," breathed Ward, in an awed voice, "that you've made that much peddling!"
"Oh, I don't do the peddling myself," said McHenry airily. "I can't waste time with the little fellows. The only people I see are the magnates—the guys I can meet on an equal footing, you know."
"Magnates!" snorted Spinden.
"Yes, magnates!" retorted McHenry. "Just to keep you from being so fresh, I'll just remark in passing that I lunched with one of 'em at the Exchange Club yesterday noon. Believe me or not, I don't care. I've got the lunch all stowed away, and I deposited a check in the First National this morning."
"This man McHenry," said Spinden to Ward, "is going to be either the President of the United States or a jail-bird before our triennial—and I don't know which."
"Whichever I am," said Pepper generously, "I'll always count on you when I need help. The easiest way to make money I know of is to take it away from simple souls like you fellows on a bet. By the way, I've got only a week or two more to run. Want to double the stakes?"
"No, thank you, Pepper!" they said in chorus.
III
On the day specified for the termination of the contract, McHenry gathered into his room all the men who had wagered against him, and supplied cigars, cigarettes, and some very tasteless beer which, he assured them, was much better for their digestions than if he had remembered to order ice with it. When the assembled company—and it wasn't a very hilarious company—had sampled the beer and unanimously expressed a preference for water, McHenry sat on the top of his desk and harangued them.
"I've just been over the figures," he began, "and this aggregation of physical and mental giants I see before me owes me exactly seven hundred and thirty dollars. Some of the cowardly gentlemen didn't show up, and one classmate whom I won't mention save by inference—his name is Street, and he's a mean hound!—hedged. But the amount coming to me is seven-thirty."
"Prove it!" said a man in the back of the room. "I will, my gentle gazelle," Pepper assured him. "That is, if you fellows will take a lot of receipted bills and my check book as evidence."
"Well, how in thunder do we know how you got it?" demanded Sewall.
"That's the point! I want to explain how it is. Well, I'll give you my absolute, rock-bottom, gilt-edged word of honor that I made every single cent of that wad in collar buttons."
"Prove it, Pep!"
"You must have something to show for it!"
"Oh, I'll take Pep's word! Don't be idiots!"
"Sure, we'll take his word—but the trouble with this lad is that you're never quite sure what he's talking about."
"Prove it, Pep—if there's money in it, we might want to get in with you."
"That's it exactly," said McHenry. "The scheme is so confoundedly simple that I don't want to give it up until Class Day at least. So I ask you to take my word—"
"Yea, that's a fine, fat stunt! We take your word, and you take our money! Why don't you take our word—we'll pay up when you prove up!"
"Now you're talking!" said Sewall wickedly.
"Suits me," agreed Pepper. "There's only one hitch in it. You're all together now, and by Class Day I couldn't collect more than one of you at a time."
"Nothing doing, Pep!"
"Oh, that's too obvious!"
"We're none of us Rockefellers! Come up with the big idea!"
"I'll tell you what I'll do," said McHenry. "To any man in this room who'll write me a check now for what he owes me, I'll tell the whole thing—privately."
The men instinctively turned to catch the eyes of some one else. No one spoke.
"More than that," said Pepper, "to any man who'll write that check now—and so that nobody tries to quibble, I'd suggest that the man who writes it goes down to Leavitt's to cash it, and bring real money back with him—to any man who'll do that, I'll give a tenth interest in the scheme."
"But I haven't got a hundred in the bank," said Spinden plaintively.
"Neither have I," said Sewall.
"I'm overdrawn as it is," apologized Ward. "And they're raising Cain about it."
"Oh, threaten to withdraw your deficit and put it in the Cambridge Trust if they won't shut up," advised McHenry. "That's what I did once—it made 'em so cheerful they let me overdraw some more."
"I was going to ask you for time, anyway," said Phillips frankly. "As a matter of fact, Pep, I never thought I'd lose."
"I didn't either."
"Can't do it, Pep, old top."
McHenry grinned quizzically.
"What a fine bunch of financiers I see in this room!" he scored them. "After all the big talk you made, you'd be in a nice hole if I did prove up to you, wouldn't you?" He pondered diligently. "I'll tell you what I'll do," he said. "Seeing you're all so hard up, and Class Day's coming, and I'd hate to see any nice girls going around without flowers on account of me, I'll compromise for fifty cents on the dollar if you'll pay now. Otherwise, I might have to dun you on Class Day for the full amount. What about it?"
Spinden grabbed for his check book.
"I'll take you up!" he said, scribbling as fast as he could.
"Lend me a blank check, will you?" asked Phillips.
"My dear young friends," said Pepper wearily, taking a little heap of white slips from his desk, "when will you learn that your uncle Pepper is a great man? Here's enough blank checks to pay the national debt!"
One man paused in the act of signing.
"This is perfectly square, isn't it?" he queried. "We know you must have made six hundred, Pep, but you swear it was in collar buttons?"
"I'll swear it any time," McHenry assured him. "Any time I can keep my face straight!"
"Well—" The man completed his signature and waved the check in air to dry it. "You'd sting us somehow anyway, Pep—I'll take your word for it, and think I'm lucky!"
"Lucky!" grinned McHenry. "You're shot with it!" He produced from his pocket a handful of little trinkets which glistened in the sunlight. "As a memento of this delightful occasion," he added, "I want to present each of you with a little souvenir—a fourteen-karat collar button, with my compliments!"
There was a firm rap on the door; Sewall, opening it, beheld the radiant features of Terry, the sable messenger of the gods who dwell in University Hall.
"Hello, Terry!" sang out McHenry. "What's new?"
"Oh, nothin' much," said Terry, dropping a letter on the window seat. "Just a li'l' bit o' congratulations from the dean!"
IV
Four days prior to Class Day, McHenry's room became the mecca of all those who felt that their funds couldn't do justice to the affection they cherished for certain young ladies of Boston and vicinity.
Hearing that McHenry was again a capitalist, they sought him out; and he, exercising the privilege of capitalists the world over, delivered a long didactic lecture in each case before he advanced the loan.
It wasn't his conception of sanity, he said, for men speedily to undertake the running of elevators, the cleaning of inkwells, the treading of State Street with wallets chained to their wrists, to waste money buying flowers and extra Pudding tickets, and spread tickets for girls they couldn't afford to marry, anyway.
In listening to the counter arguments, he was astonished and highly gratified to learn how many of these men were bringing their sisters to the festivity; but he responded by insisting that any well-bred sister would be so startled at the unexpected extravagance in the way of flowers that she would probably analyze them as a bribe, a mere blind to divert attention from some recent defection, and so the shortsighted brother would be suspected of untold sins. Nevertheless, he made the loans.
McHenry himself didn't remain in Cambridge for Class Day. He had never been a ladies' man, and he knew that if he prowled about the yard in search of amusement, he was sure to come upon some of the men who had borrowed money to entertain their "sisters," and that the meetings would be embarrassing for all concerned.
Even so, he managed to keep his covenant to three or four of his immediate circle, and left them fully convinced that James Pepper McHenry could make a fortune in toothpicks or birdseed if he gave his mind to the problem for a sufficient length of time.
He did not, however, shun Commencement. Class Day was a mere garden party, with the view obstructed on all sides; but Commencement was an occasion of deeper significance. Throughout his four years, Pepper had orated humorously and cynically against that species of mankind known as the "greasy grind," but when it came to the final issue, he wanted to sit in Sanders Theater in his thin black gown and applaud the Latin salutatory, given by a man he had never met. That man had accomplished something!
He wanted to hear the class oration and the poem, and he wanted to sing the ode, although he flattered himself that he could have done better with one hand than the nervous author. He yelled himself hoarse at the honorary degrees; sang "Fair Harvard" at least as loudly as the men on either side of him, and faked the second and third verses, as every one else did. Then, escaping from the stuffy auditorium among the first, he sprinted over to the new lecture hall, where he dived into the basement, and won the distinction of receiving the first degree in his class—unfortunately not the first in rank, but the first in time.
It was not his nature to delay in the yard for melancholy retrospection. It was all over, and it wouldn't do any good to hang around and wail about it. Besides, his father had come unexpectedly to Cambridge, heard the speeches from the gallery of Sanders, and arranged to meet his son in town at noon. Pepper did none of the things which the departing graduate is supposed to do. He shed not a tear at the dear old library; dropped not a pearl of recollection on the steps of dear old Sever; wasted not a whistle of recognition on the dear old squirrels. He merely bought one of the dear old cigars at Leavitt's, and hopped down to the dear old subway, and carried his diploma in to his father.
"Well, boy," said Mr. McHenry, "so this is it? What does all that mean?"
"It means," explained Pepper, "that I'm admitted to the fellowship of educated men."
"James," said his father, "they've misjudged you. By the way, I was rather annoyed that you didn't write more about your finances for the last few months. You distressed me a great deal by asking for so much money."
"Oh, I came out all right," said Pepper.
His father ordered a modest luncheon, without the appurtenances to which Pepper was accustomed. The head waiter, scenting the circumstances, winked at Pepper behind his father's back.
"I came over chiefly to see if I couldn't get you in with some friends of mine on State Street," said Mr. McHenry. "We'll take that up this afternoon. As I was saying—if you hadn't showed so many signs of weakness in your financial affairs, I'd take you in with me, but as it is, I think you'd better get some unprejudiced training first. How did you get out of your need for money in April?"
"Collar buttons," said Pepper, tasting his cold consommé.
"What?"
"Collar buttons," repeated Pepper. "You wouldn't send me any money, and I don't like to borrow it"—his father nodded approvingly—"so I made some."
"You're not trying to be funny, are you, James?"
"Oh, no."
"Then be a little more communicative."
"Well," began Pepper, "you see, I was broke, and everybody knew it, and we got talking about making money. I said it was a cinch, if you know how. I think I said a man with any sense could make money selling collar buttons, if he knew how. Some of the fellows—er—differed with me. So I showed 'em up."
"How was that?"
Pepper grinned.
"Oh, I thought of a scheme. Of course I knew there wouldn't be anything in selling small lots—you'd have to deal in big figures. So first I came in town and looked for a manufacturer. Well, right there I was lucky. I found a little fellow who was making gold-plated ones and solid-gold ones, and he was just about ready to go into bankruptcy. You might as well talk up to people, you know—it doesn't cost anything. I asked him what it would be worth if I could sell a couple of thousand dollars' worth of his junk. He nearly had epilepsy, and said he'd give me fifty per cent for all I'd sell. Then I went to the biggest laundry in Boston. I asked 'em how many new customers they get a year, and how many they keep—how many quit to go somewhere else. Then I asked 'em what they'd pay for a little advertising dodge to please a new customer so much that he'd never think of changing. They got interested about that time. Well—I told them that whenever they got a new man customer, to send all his shirts back to him with gold collar buttons in the holes instead of these little cheap black or white ones they do put in. Of course I had a pretty long argument—well, they bought a lot of 'em. Then I said what a great scheme it would be to use those buttons on the delivery just before Christmas for all their customers. They saw that, too, but they said it was too far ahead to buy supplies. I had to have that order, so I sold 'em at cost. I didn't make any commission, but it was good business—because I could go across the street to the second biggest laundry, and tell them about it! And—well, after the second day I made the manufacturer pay me fifty dollars a week salary besides the commission. I got a trade list of laundries all over the country, and sent 'em circular letters. Then I hired two or three decent young men that had been down and out—I got their names through the Y. M. C. A.—and paid 'em ten dollars a week to go through this whole section—you know there are a lot of fairly big towns not more than a dollar's car fare from here. And then I got the idea of going to the haberdashers—only the ones that sell high-priced shirts, and getting them to put these buttons in the shirts. You see, dad, they were pretty fine buttons, and lower by three dollars a gross than anything else on the market. I guess that's all."
"James," said his father, "how much money did you make?"
"Oh, not much—I paid the solicitors myself—maybe two thousand."
"You made two thousand dollars—and that was your own scheme?"
"Of course it was!" retorted Pepper indignantly. "Why? Doesn't it sound foolish enough?"
Mr. McHenry put his hand on the table with such vigor that the glasses rocked.
"James," he suggested, "I guess perhaps we'd better go back to Chicago together. I can use a few brains right in the office. Do you think you could get along in brokerage?"
"Sure I could!" said Pepper. "No different from college, is it? All you have to do is think a little faster than the next man. How much do I get?"
"We generally start beginners at ten dollars a week," said his father jocosely. "What do you imagine you could earn?"
"Well," dreamed Pepper, "how much money is there in Chicago?"
V
He stayed at the Touraine with his father that night. When he unpacked his suit case, the diploma rolled over the side and tumbled to the floor. He picked it up, smoothed it out, and read the solemn Latinity with intense seriousness.
"Educated, by gosh!" said Pepper.
He undressed slowly, switched off the light, and scrambled into bed. At the end of an hour, he raised himself on his elbow and grinned rapturously in the darkness.
"Great old dump!" he murmured enthusiastically.
All his yesterdays were behind him; to-morrow he must begin the great race of life, and he longed for it passionately. Confident, eager, secure in the realization of his future, he could hardly wait for the daylight to come.
"Of course," he admitted to himself, "they're all good fellows—darned good fellows; but, after all, that was just playing! It was too easy! Now I can be a regular business man."
For a moment he dreamed happily of the life he would lead, the fortune he would make, the clubs he would join—illogically his memory reverted to Phillips and Ward and Sewall and Spinden, who lived so widely apart, whose lives had mingled so closely with his, and now would touch it only between trains, or at brief reunions. He remembered their famous Prohibition Club, their track meets, their Med. Fac. escapade, the interclass football victories; their quarrels and their loves and their probations and their politics—of course that was very juvenile, and his life work was just opening before him; but—
"By gosh!" he whispered, in the darkness. "By gosh, I wish I were a freshman!"