The Motormaniacs | Page 3

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 over.
"That night I didn't do anything, because I wanted to think it ever; but the next morning I went to papa and asked him point-blank if I might sell Gee-whizz if I wanted go. He looked very grave, and talked a lot about what a good horse Gee-whizz was, and how hard I'd find it to replace her. But it was one of papa's rules that there shouldn't be any strings to his presents to me--that's the comfort of having a thoroughbred for your father, you know--and ever since I was a little child he had always told me what was mine was mine to do just what I liked with. He's the whitest father a girl ever had. But he spoke to me beautifully in a sort