Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/850

790 considered these things, and the hand that held the treasure trembled. The old gentleman was opposite the door now; every nerve in the Lady Bountiful's small body was aquiver, the tears came into her eyes as he walked past, and again she had been faint of heart. She watched him go slowly down the street, and all the great city did not harbor a more miserable little girl than the Lady Bountiful. As the distance between them increased there was a perceptible rise in her courage. Pshaw! What a silly she had been to be afraid! Didn't the martyrs go down into pits to be eaten up by wild beasts? and here she was afraid to ask a poor old gentleman if he would like to have a penny! The flame of her courage began to kindle. It burned through the small body till she was scarce conscious of what she did. A force impelled her to pursuit; she ran down the street, a flying figure, all legs and streaming hair. She overtook the old gentleman and mumbled something, but he did not seem to hear. He thought out things during his afternoon walk—things that made news and panics. She spoke again, and as he did not seem to notice, she took him by the hand and walked a few steps with him. The old gentleman became dimly aware that some one was tugging at his hand, and looked down to find a little girl talking up at him.

"Please," she asked, between gasps, "do you want a penny?" The old gentleman was slightly deaf, and "penny" was all he managed to make out. He concluded that the Lady Bountiful was asking him for a penny—"and a very forward thing, too, for a little girl to ask of an utter stranger."

"Eh? what did you say?" and he did not ask it sweetly.

The Lady Bountiful took breath, gasped, lost it again, and finally gulped out, "Please, would you like to have a penny?"

The old gentleman glared his amazement. "Yes, Sissy, I should like to have a penny. Indeed"—and she missed the twinkle in his eye—"I should like to have several pennies; the more the merrier, in fact."

He must be a very poor old gentleman to ask for several pennies, and again she wondered how he had managed about his supper the other evening when she had wanted to give him one and had not dared.

"I would give you several pennies"—she was silent for a moment with the struggle of trying to say it,—"but I do not know if you are worthy?"

The old gentleman laughed explosively. "You must have been reading Wall Street news; but don't believe all they say about me. There are a couple of us who are not so black as we are painted."

The Lady Bountiful had heard the maxim as applied to some one not in Wall Street. "Yes," she answered, gravely, "and the other one is the devil."

This seemed to please the old gentleman immensely; he even chuckled, "Not the first time that I've been in such distinguished company," and, after a pause, "I suppose, Sissy, that your father has been buying 'Milling Valley,' eh, that you know so much about the company I keep?"

"What is Milling Valley?" she inquired, vaguely.

"Those who are holding it don't seem to think much of it as a keepsake at present."

"I must be turning back now," she reminded him; "they never let me go further than the corner." She held out her hand; the old gentleman extended his with prim formality. He was not much addicted to hand-shaking, and made something of a ceremony of it.

"Good-by," she said, and ran as fast as she could up the street.

He looked in his hand; there were two dull copper pennies. "Well, I'll be—" said the old gentleman, and he finished the sentence.

At his home, which was not far from the neighborhood in which the Lady Bountiful lived, a private secretary was waiting for some further instructions about the mail that had been sent up from his downtown office. He concluded from "Uncle Dan'l's" manner, which was particularly dry, that he had been devising further schemes during his afternoon walk. But when the secretary's work was done, and when the old gentleman had sat down to his solitary dinner—he liked it solitary, and would have been the last to look for commiseration on that ground,—he took out the two pennies and looked at them