“Now, now; just don’t worry that big, nifty head of yours about me.”

“The—­the morning papers and all.  I—­I just hate to see you going so to—­to the dogs, Charley—­a—­fellow like you—­with brains.”

“I’m a bad egg, girl, and what you going to do about it?  I was raised like one, and I’ll die like one.”

“You ain’t a bad egg.  You just never had a chance.  You been killed with coin.”

“Killed with coin!  Why, Loo, do you know, I haven’t had to ask my old man for a cent since my poor old granny died five years ago and left me a world of money?  While he’s been piling it up like the Rocky Mountains I’ve been getting down to rock-bottom.  What would you say, sweetness, if I told you I was down to my last few thousands?  Time to touch my old man, eh?”

He drank off his first glass with a quaff, laughing and waving it empty before her face to give off its perfume.

“My old man is going to wake up in a minute and find me on his checking-account again.  Charley boy better be making connections with headquarters or he won’t find himself such a hit with the niftiest doll in town, eh?”

“Charley, you—­you haven’t run through those thousands and thousands and thousands the papers said you got from your granny that time?”

“It was slippery, hon; somebody buttered it.”

“Charley, Charley, ain’t there just no limit to your wildness?”

“You’re right, girl; I’ve been killed with coin.  My old man’s been too busy all these years sitting out there in that marble tomb in Kingsmoreland biting the rims off pennies to hold me back from the devil.  Honey, that old man, even if he is my father, didn’t know no more how to raise a boy like me than that there salt-cellar.  Every time I got in a scrape he bought me out of it, filled up the house with rough talk, and let it go at that.  It’s only this last year, since he’s short on health, that he’s kicking up the way he should have before it got too late.  My old man never used to talk it out with me, honey.  He used to lash it out.  I got a twelve-year-old welt on my back now, high as your finger.  Maybe it’ll surprise you, girl, but now, since he can’t welt me up any more, me and him don’t exchange ten words a month.”

“Did—­did he hear about last night, Charley?  You know what came out in the paper about making a new will if—­if you ever got pulled in again for rough-housing?”

“Don’t you worry that nifty head of yours about my old man ever making a new will.  He’s been pulling that ever since they fired me from the academy for lighting a cigarette with a twenty-dollar bill.”

“Charley!”

“Next to taking it with him, he’ll leave it to me before he’ll see a penny go out of the family.  I’ve seen his will, hon.”

“Charley, you—­you got so much good in you.  The way you sent that wooden leg out to poor old lady Guthrie.  The way you made Jimmy Ball go home, and the blind-school boys and all.  Why can’t you get yourself on the right track where you belong, Charley?  Why don’t you clear—­out—­West where it’s clean?”