The Motormaniacs | Page 3

or write one of those Marie Bashkirtseff books that
shock people into buying them by thousands--and whenever I saw a
Manton on the road my eyes would almost pop out of my head. Then,
when I was almost desperate, Mr. Collenquest came on a visit to papa."
"I see now why you said Wall Street," I remarked.
"Mr. Collenquest is an old friend of papa's," she continued. "They were
at the same college, and both belonged to what they call 'the wonderful
old class of seventy-nine,' and there's nothing in the world papa
wouldn't do for Mr. Collenquest or Mr. Collenquest for papa. I had
never seen him before and had rather a wild idea of him from the
caricatures in the paper--you know the kind--with dollar-signs all over
his clothes and one of his feet on the neck of Honest Toil. Well, he
wasn't like that a bit--in fact, he was more like a bishop than anything
else and the only thing he ever put his foot on was a chair when he and
papa would sit up half the night talking about the wonderful old class
of seventy-nine. Papa is rather a quiet man ordinarily, but that week it
seemed as though he'd never stop laughing; and I'd wake up at one
o'clock in the morning and hear them still at it. Of course, they had long
serious talks, too, and Mr. Collenquest was never so like a bishop as
when the conversation turned on stocks and Wall Street. When he
boomed out things like 'the increasing tendency of associated capital in
this country,' or 'the admitted financial emancipation of the Middle
West,'--you felt somehow you were a better girl for having listened to
him. What he seemed to like best--besides sitting up all night till papa
was a wreck--was to take walks. He was as bad about horses as papa
was about automobiles--and of course papa had to go, too --and

naturally I tagged after them both--and so we walked and walked and
walked.
"Well, one day they were talking about investments, and stocks, and
how cheap money was, and how hard it was to know what to do with it,
and I was picking wild-flowers and wondering whether I'd have my
Manton red, or green with gilt stripes, when I heard something that
brought me up like an explosion in the muffler.
"'I know you are pretty well fixed, Fred,' said Mr. Collenquest, 'but I
never knew a man yet who couldn't do with forty or fifty thousand
more.'
"'I don't care to get it that way, Bill,' said my father.
"'I tell you Great Western is going to reach six hundred and fifty,' said
Mr. Collenquest.
"I picked daisies fast, but if there ever was a girl all ears, it was I.
"'I am giving you a bit of inside information that's worth millions of
dollars,' said Mr. Collenquest in that solemn tone that always gave me
the better-girl feeling.
"'My dear old chap,' said papa, 'I don't want you to believe I am not
grateful for this sort of proof of your friendship; and you mustn't think,
because I have strong convictions, that I arrogate any superior, virtue to
myself. Every man must be a law to himself. I have never speculated
and I never will.'
"Mr. Collenquest heaved a regular bishop's sigh, and stopped and put
one foot on a log as though it was a toiler.
"'This isn't speculation, Fred,' he said. 'This is a fact, because I happen
to be rigging the market myself.'
"'I don't care to do it,' said my, father, as firmly as before.
"'If it's just being a little short of ready money,' said Mr. Collenquest,
'well--my purse is yours, you know--from one figure to six.'
"My father only shook his head.
"'I said fifty thousand,' said Mr. Collenquest, 'but there is nothing to
prevent your adding another naught to it.
"'It's speculating,' said my father.
"'Well, I'm sorry,' said Mr Collenquest. 'I'm getting pretty far into the
forties now, Fred, and I don't think the world holds anything dearer to
me than a few old friends like yourself.' He put out his hand as he
spoke, and papa took it. It was awfully affecting. I looked as girly-girly

as I could, lest they should catch me listening, and picked daisies
harder than ever.
"'Of course, this is sacredly confidential,' said Mr. Collenquest, 'but I
know you'll let it go no farther, Fred.'
"'My word on that,' said my father in his grand, gentleman-of
-the-old-school way.
"Then they started to walk again, and though I felt a little sneak right
down to my shoes, I listened and listened for anything more. But they
wandered off into the Pressed Steel Car Company, till it got so tiresome
I ached all