The Financier. Theodore Dreiser
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going into the soap business?”
“No. But I know where I can get some of that soap cheap.”
He hurried out again and ran to his father's bank. It was after banking hours; but he knew how to get in, and he knew that his father would be glad to see him make thirty dollars. He only wanted to borrow the money for a day.
“What's the trouble, Frank?” asked his father, looking up from his desk when he appeared, breathless and red faced.
“I want you to loan me thirty-two dollars! Will you?”
“Why, yes, I might. What do you want to do with it?”
“I want to buy some soap—seven boxes of Castile soap. I know where I can get it and sell it. Mr. Dalrymple will take it. He's already offered me sixty-two for it. I can get it for thirty-two. Will you let me have the money? I've got to run back and pay the auctioneer.”
His father smiled. This was the most business-like attitude he had seen his son manifest. He was so keen, so alert for a boy of thirteen.
“Why, Frank,” he said, going over to a drawer where some bills were, “are you going to become a financier already? You're sure you're not going to lose on this? You know what you're doing, do you?”
“You let me have the money, father, will you?” he pleaded. “I'll show you in a little bit. Just let me have it. You can trust me.”
He was like a young hound on the scent of game. His father could not resist his appeal.
“Why, certainly, Frank,” he replied. “I'll trust you.” And he counted out six five-dollar certificates of the Third National's own issue and two ones. “There you are.”
Frank ran out of the building with a briefly spoken thanks and returned to the auction room as fast as his legs would carry him. When he came in, sugar was being auctioned. He made his way to the auctioneer's clerk.
“I want to pay for that soap,” he suggested.
“Now?”
“Yes. Will you give me a receipt?”
“Yep.”
“Do you deliver this?”
“No. No delivery. You have to take it away in twenty-four hours.”
That difficulty did not trouble him.
“All right,” he said, and pocketed his paper testimony of purchase.
The auctioneer watched him as he went out. In half an hour he was back with a drayman—an idle levee-wharf hanger-on who was waiting for a job.
Frank had bargained with him to deliver the soap for sixty cents. In still another half-hour he was before the door of the astonished Mr. Dalrymple whom he had come out and look at the boxes before attempting to remove them. His plan was to have them carried on to his own home if the operation for any reason failed to go through. Though it was his first great venture, he was cool as glass.
“Yes,” said Mr. Dalrymple, scratching his gray head reflectively. “Yes, that's the same soap. I'll take it. I'll be as good as my word. Where'd you get it, Frank?”
“At Bixom's auction up here,” he replied, frankly and blandly.
Mr. Dalrymple had the drayman bring in the soap; and after some formality—because the agent in this case was a boy—made out his note at thirty days and gave it to him.
Frank thanked him and pocketed the note. He decided to go back to his father's bank and discount it, as he had seen others doing, thereby paying his father back and getting his own profit in ready money. It couldn't be done ordinarily on any day after business hours; but his father would make an exception in his case.
He hurried back, whistling; and his father glanced up smiling when he came in.
“Well, Frank, how'd you make out?” he asked.
“Here's a note at thirty days,” he said, producing the paper Dalrymple had given him. “Do you want to discount that for me? You can take your thirty-two out of that.”
His father examined it closely. “Sixty-two dollars!” he observed. “Mr. Dalrymple! That's good paper! Yes, I can. It will cost you ten per cent.,” he added, jestingly. “Why don't you just hold it, though? I'll let you have the thirty-two dollars until the end of the month.”
“Oh, no,” said his son, “you discount it and take your money. I may want mine.”
His father smiled at his business-like air. “All right,” he said. “I'll fix it to-morrow. Tell me just how you did this.” And his son told him.
At seven o'clock that evening Frank's mother heard about it, and in due time Uncle Seneca.
“What'd I tell you, Cowperwood?” he asked. “He has stuff in him, that youngster. Look out for him.”
Mrs. Cowperwood looked at her boy curiously at dinner. Was this the son she had nursed at her bosom not so very long before? Surely he was developing rapidly.
“Well, Frank, I hope you can do that often,” she said.
“I hope so, too, ma,” was his rather noncommittal reply.
Auction sales were not to be discovered every day, however, and his home grocer was only open to one such transaction in a reasonable period of time, but from the very first young Cowperwood knew how to make money. He took subscriptions for a boys' paper; handled the agency for the sale of a new kind of ice-skate, and once organized a band of neighborhood youths into a union for the purpose of purchasing their summer straw hats at wholesale. It was not his idea that he could get rich by saving. From the first he had the notion that liberal spending was better, and that somehow he would get along.
It was in this year, or a little earlier, that he began to take an interest in girls. He had from the first a keen eye for the beautiful among them; and, being good-looking and magnetic himself, it was not difficult for him to attract the sympathetic interest of those in whom he was interested. A twelve-year old girl, Patience Barlow, who lived further up the street, was the first to attract his attention or be attracted by him. Black hair and snapping black eyes were her portion, with pretty pigtails down her back, and dainty feet and ankles to match a dainty figure. She was a Quakeress, the daughter of Quaker parents, wearing a demure little bonnet. Her disposition, however, was vivacious, and she liked this self-reliant, self-sufficient, straight-spoken boy. One day, after an exchange of glances from time to time, he said, with a smile and the courage that was innate in him: “You live up my way, don't you?”
“Yes,” she replied, a little flustered—this last manifested in a nervous swinging of her school-bag—“I live at number one-forty-one.”
“I know the house,” he said. “I've seen you go in there. You go to the same school my sister does, don't you? Aren't you Patience Barlow?” He had heard some of the boys speak her name. “Yes. How do you know?”
“Oh, I've heard,” he smiled. “I've seen you. Do you like licorice?”
He fished in his coat and pulled out some fresh sticks that were sold at the time.
“Thank you,” she said, sweetly, taking one.
“It isn't very good. I've been carrying it a long time. I had some taffy the other day.”
“Oh, it's all right,” she replied, chewing the end of hers.
“Don't you know my sister, Anna Cowperwood?” he recurred, by way of self-introduction. “She's in a lower grade than you are, but I thought maybe you might have seen her.”
“I think I know who she is. I've seen her coming home from school.”
“I live right over there,” he confided, pointing to his own home as he drew near to it, as if she didn't know. “I'll see you around here now, I guess.”