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--he must have a heart-to-heart talk of a business nature about his allowance. He and his friends desired to take a post-graduate course. They proposed to specialize on New York. Mr. Leigh always called him Thomas. This had saved Mr. Leigh at least one thousand dollars a year during Tommy's four at college, by making Tommy realize that he had no doting father. At times the boy had sent his requests for an extra fifty with some misgivings--by reason of the impelling cause of the request--but Mr. Leigh always sent the check for the exact amount by return mail, and made no direct reference to it. Instead he permitted himself an irrelevant phrase or two, like, “Remember, Thomas, that you must have no conditions at the end of the term.” Possibly because of a desire to play fair with a parent who had no sense of humor, or perhaps it was because he was level-headed enough not to overwork a good thing, at all events Tommy managed, sometimes pretty narrowly, to escape the conditions. And being very popular, and knowing that quotable wisdom was expected of him, he was rather careful of what he said and did.