Adventure, November 1915 — page 6: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

< ee: a a4 Vitky - WAG Re ? v ven iA a vig Shop ye Tt Na ey Ls At. i eh 4 _ close to a hundred and ninety at another. He possessed a quality of vibration, a plus of vigor beyond the average that was com- municative, seeming to charge the atmos- — phere with magnetic energy and a sense of conviction. His quiet mention of a sum to which his listeners had been strangers— even in hope—for many a day, seemed mat- ter-of-fact. Somehow one would not have been surprised to hear a second announce- ment that the gold was outside, waiting to be signed for. Even Jim Winton, the flip- pant, was impressed. Yet, to the general world, Addams was a failure. To himself, he was a man with a bad start who would yet challenge the leaders in the stretch. He turned to the third occupant of the studio, Jim Winton’s sister, who had risen at Addams’s entrance a few minutes previous- ly. and cuddled down again among the cushions of a long-used, much-abused, but hospitable Morris chair. “Well, Peggy?” he asked. “You purry, comfy thing, what would you do with it?” She raised her head, the firelight on her rounded throat deepening the natural car- - mine of her cheeks, heightening the red- gold of her hair to match the curling flames. ‘The answer’s easy, fairy godfather,” she mocked. ‘Get your wand ready. I’ve been fire-dreaming for an hour while Jim has been _ finishing up those plans he’s working on. I was a thousand miles away when you ar- rived. What would I do? I’d clamber out of this rut we are all in and I’d start in whichever direction my nose pointed.” “Then you’d arrive in Heaven before your time, sister mine,’ broke in her brother. Peggy made a face at him that was more of a reward than a punishment, and, the suggestion that her perfectly well-chiseled little nose was tip-tilted being largely a fra- ternal fallacy, went on placidly. “Td start and I’d keep going till I’d seen everything there was to be seen, and I’d get hold of dad and mother and—but don’t get me going. It’s your turn to answer foolish questions. Archer Addams, what would you do with three-quarters of a mil- lion dollars?” “Tt’s really only a quarter of a million, Peggy,” he replied. “It has to be split three ways.” “Only a quarter?” exclaimed Winton in a voice of exaggerated interest. ‘Then I re- _ Adventure fuse to play any more. I’m going to finish this job, which represents one hundred and twenty-five dollars in real money.”’ He went back to his tables, and Addams, looking down at the girl, answered her ques- tion. “T know what I’m going to do with mine,” he said. “I worked that out coming down here. My law library of thirty-odd volumes, - more or less in repair, my desk and two chairs, my typewriter, my one near-Persian rug, well worn by bill-collectors and book- agents, I am going to turn over to a young chap I know who is trying to ‘get by’ with a pine table and one chair, first endeavoring to persuade him to give up the law and learn barbering or something definitely lu- crative. Then I am going to get the gold, buy one of Jim’s very best plans, build me a house and marry the girl I’m in love with,” “And settle down as a country gentle- man. That sounds nice and sensible,”’ she said. “No, not settle down. The girl wants to travel.” Saree : | rN IT MIGHT have been -a sudden Oe leaping of the flames, but Addams —# fancied the flush on the girl’s face deepened as he spoke. He hoped so. She sprang to her feet. : “Stop work, Jim,’ she ordered. ‘“‘Sit down, Archer. I’m going to make tea. Then you, sir, can explain what you mean by coming into our humble studio and talk- ing about quarters of millions as if you had brought in a bag of oranges for general dis- tribution.” ‘She busied herself with the tea-things while her brother gathered his papers to- gether and Addams lit a shaded lamp. They were good friends, these three, chums of all the years from childhood. The two men, college mates, were about the same age, thirty; the girl seven years young- er than her brother. A few years before, their fortunes had been lost in the failure of a common speculation, a catastrophe that had set the boys to a hasty attempt at de- veloping their capabilities for__huysiness, Peggy kept house fox iner brother who striig= gled with the task of designing ten-thou- sand-dollar bungalows for five-thousand- dollar clients. Archer Addams studied law for the benefit of clients as yet conspicuous by their absence. <S) Comicboo (E(@) m