



Produced by David Widger from page images generously
provided by Google Books








THE LAST PENNY

By Edwin Lefevre

Harper And Brothers Publishers

New York And London

1917

[Illustration: 0008]

[Illustration: 0011]




TO THE LAST PENNY




CHAPTER I

THOMAS LEIGH, ex-boy, considered the dozen neckties before him a long
time, and finally decided to wait until after breakfast.

It was his second day at home and his third day out of college. Already
his undergraduate life seemed far away. His triumphs--of personality
rather than of scholarship--lingered as a luminous mist that softened
the sterner realities and mellowed them goldenly. When one is young
reminiscences of one's youth are apt to take on a tinge of melancholy,
but Tommy, not having breakfasted, shook off the mood determinedly. He
was two hundred and fifty-five months old; therefore, he decided that no
great man ever crosses a bridge until he comes to it. Tommy's bridge
was still one long joy-ride ahead. The sign, “Slow down to four miles an
hour!” was not yet in sight. The selection of the necktie was a serious
matter because he was to lunch at Sherry's with the one sister and the
younger of the two cousins of Rivington Willetts.

In the mean time he had an invitation to spend the first half of July
with Bull Wilson's folks at Gloucester, a week with “Van” Van Schaick
for the cruise at Newport, as long as he wished with Jimmy Maitland at
Mr. Maitland's camp in the Adirondacks, and he had given a half promise
to accompany Ellis Gladwin to Labrador for big game in the fall.

He suddenly remembered that he was at his last ten-spot. There was the
Old Man to touch for fifty bucks. And also--sometime--