“I know what it is like to scrimp and save, and my children are going to be spared that!” was Mrs. Gates’s creed in the matter.

The little girls were always dressed alike in elaborately simple clothes, with frilly, starched underpinnies, silk stockings, high boots buttoned up slim legs; and across their shoulders, from beneath wonderful lingerie hats, hung shining curls.  The latter were not natural, but had each day to be elaborately constructed.  They made a dainty and charming picture.

“Did you ever see anything so sweet in all your life!” was the invariable feminine exclamation.

Clara and Ethel-May always heard these remarks.  They conducted themselves with the poise and savoir faire of grown women.  Before they were twelve they could “handle” servants, conduct polite conversations in a correctly artificial accent, and adapt their manners to another’s station in life.

Charley Junior’s development was sharply divided into two periods, with the second of which alone we have to do.  The first, briefly, was repressive.  He was not allowed to play with certain boys, he was not permitted to stray beyond certain bounds, he was kept clean and dressed-up, he was taught his manners.  In short, Mrs. Gates tried—­without knowing what she was doing—­to use the same formula on him as she had on Ethel-May and Clara.

In the second period, he was a grief to his family.  Roughly speaking, this period commenced about the time he began to be known as “Chuck” instead of Charley.

There was no real harm in the boy.  He was high spirited, full of life, strong as a horse, and curious.  Possessed of the patrician haughty good looks we breed so easily from shirtsleeves, free with his money, known as the son of his powerful father, a good boxer, knowing no fear, he speedily became a familiar popular figure around town.  It delighted him to play the prince, either incognito or in person; to “blow off the crowd,” to battle joyously with longshoremen; to “rough house” the semi-respectable restaurants.  The Barbary Coast knew him, Taits, Zinkands, the Poodle Dog, the Cliff House, Franks, and many other resorts not to be spoken of so openly.  He even got into the police courts once or twice; and nonchalantly paid a fine, with a joke at the judge and a tip to the policeman who had arrested him.  There was too much drinking, too much gambling, too loose a companionship, altogether too much spending; but in this case the life was redeemed from its usual significance by a fantastic spirit of play, a generosity of soul, a regard for the unfortunate, a courtliness toward all the world, a refusal to believe in meanness or sordidness or cruelty.  Chuck Gates was inbred with the spirit of noblesse oblige.