who
had just dropped a fare. He seemed pleased to see me, and remembered on
the spot that once he had offered me a free ride in his father's
fiacres. Now, he said, he would give me a free ride for old time's sake.
"Yes," I said, laughing, "it will be some return for my topaz which you stole!"
"What, me? Steal a topaz?" he said.
"Stealing by eating," I said, and for the first time told him the story. How that man laughed!
I
stuck to my boyish hobby of collecting "precious" stones for three
years. Then for various reasons I gave it up. First one of the maids
started helping herself to my best specimens, and then my younger
brothers, who were growing up much too fast, discovered that precious
stones will cut glass and borrowed my specimens to demonstrate this
interesting fact. When window after window was slashed, and I as the
owner of the stones had been duly punished for every one, I exchanged
my collection for a stamp album. Oddly enough, I completed the deal
only the day after the collection had received its most momentous
contribution from an unexpected source.
I
had a girl cousin who was eight years my senior. Sometimes she stayed
with us and then she occupied a room that could be entered only through
mine. One night she came back from the theatre at about ten-thirty and
began undressing in my room, as the maid had forgotten to leave her an
oil-lamp in her own. Not knowing I was awake, she stood for a time in
her petticoat looking at herself in the mirror, and I thought her the
loveliest person
