"Very well, then," said the fairy, with a broad smile. "We'll make you the flat proposition--you give us a quit-claim deed to all your future right, title, and interest in our wishes, and we will guarantee that as long as you live you will, upon every occasion, find in your pocket five dollars more than you need." "Make it seven and I'll go you!" cried Wilbraham, really enthusiastic over the suggestion. "Sure!" returned Oberon with a deep sigh of relief. * * * * * "Well, dearest," said Wilbraham that night as he sat down at his onyx dinner-table, "I've gone out of the wish business." His wife's eyes lit up with a glow of happiness. "You have?" she cried, delightedly. "Yes," said Wilbraham; and then he told her of Oberon's call, and the new arrangement, and was rejoiced beyond measure to receive her approval of it. "I am so glad, Richard," she murmured, with a sigh of content. "I have been kept so busy for two years trying to think of new things to wish for that I have had no time to enjoy all the beautiful things we have." "And it isn't bad to have seven dollars more than you need whenever you need it, is it, dearest?" "Bad, Richard?" she returned. "Bad? I should say not, my beloved. To have seven dollars more than you need at all times is, to my mind, the height of an ideal prosperity. I need five thousand dollars at this very minute to pay my milliner's bill." "And here it is," said her husband, taking five crisp one-thousand-dollar bills from his vest pocket and handing them to her. "And here are seven brand-new ones besides. The fairies are true to their bargain." [Illustration: WILBRAHAM PAID BEFORE LEAVING THE COURT-ROOM] And they lived affluently forever afterward, although Midas and his confrères did sue Wilbraham for a hundred million dollars for breach of contract, securing judgment for twenty-nine million dollars, the which Wilbraham paid before leaving the court-room, departing therefrom with a balance of one five and two one dollar bills to the good. And that is why, my dear children, when you see the Wilbraham motor chugging along the highway, if you look closely you will see painted on the door of the car a simple crest, a poached egg _dormant_ upon a piece of toast _couchant_, and underneath it, in golden letters on a scroll, the family motto, _Hic semper septimus_. III PUSS, THE PROMOTER Once upon a time, not many years ago, my children, there was a well-known captain of industry who at his death had no other legacy to leave to his three sons than fourteen bank accounts, all of them overdrawn, a couple of automobiles without any tires on their wheels, and an Angora cat which had taken several prizes at the annual cat show in New York, and upon more than one occasion had had its picture printed in the society columns of the Sunday newspapers.