Wilbraham"s heart sank within him.
"It--it isn"t overdrawn, is it?" he whispered, hoa.r.s.ely.
"No, it isn"t," said the secretary.
"By Jove!" cried Wilbraham, drawing a deep sigh of relief, and springing to his feet, grasping Oberon by both hands. "Sit down, sit down! You have been a benefactor to me, sir."
"I am glad you realize that fact, Mr. Wilbraham," said the fairy, somewhat coldly. "It makes it easier for me to say what I have come here to say. We did not realize, Mr. Wilbraham," he went on, "when we awarded you the three original wishes that you would be clever enough to work the wish business up into an industry. If we had we should have made the wishes non-c.u.mulative. We were perfectly willing to permit a reasonable overdraft also, but we didn"t expect you to pyramid your holdings the way you have done until you have practically secured a corner in the market."
Wilbraham grinned broadly.
"I have been going some," he said.
"Rather," said Oberon. "Your original three wishes have been watered until we find in going over our books for the second year that they reach the sum total of three million five hundred and sixty-nine thousand four hundred and thirty-seven, and that you still have an unexpended balance on hand of four hundred and ninety-seven thousand three hundred and seventy-four wishes. The situation is just this," he continued. "Our company has been kept so busy honoring your drafts that we are threatened with a general strike. We didn"t mind building you a chateau and furbishing up your old chicken-farm, and setting you up for life, but when you enter into negotiations with old John W. Midas to incorporate yourself into a wish trust we feel that the time has come to call a halt. The fairies are honest, and no obligation of theirs will ever be repudiated, but we think that a man who tries to build up a billion-dollar corporation to deal in wishes on an investment of one poached egg is just a leetle unreasonable. Even Rockernegie had a trifle more than a paper of tacks when he founded the iron trust."
"By ginger, Oberon," said Wilbraham, "you are right! I _have_ rather put it on to you people and I"m sorry. I wouldn"t embarra.s.s you good fairies for anything in the world."
"Good!" cried Oberon, overjoyed. "I thought you would feel that way.
Just think for one moment what it would mean for us if the Great Wish Syndicate were started as a going concern, with a board of directors made up of men like John W. Midas, Rockernegie, and old Bondifeller running things. Why, there aren"t fairies enough in the world to keep up with those men, and the whole business world would come down with a crash. Their wish would elect a whole Congress. If they wished the Senate out of Washington and located on Wall Street, you"d soon find it so, and, by thunder, Wilbraham, every four years they"d wish somebody in the White House with a great capacity for taking orders and not enough spine to fill an umbrella cover, and the public would be powerless."
Wilbraham gazed thoughtfully out of the window. A dazzling prospect of imperial proportions loomed up before his vision, and the temptation was terrible, but in the end common sense came to the rescue.
"It would be a terrible nuisance," he muttered to himself, and then turning to Oberon he asked: "What is your proposition?"
"A compromise," said the fairy. "If you"ll give up your right to further wishes on our account we will place you in a position where, for the rest of your natural life, you will always have four dollars more than you need, and in addition to that, as a compliment to Mrs. Wilbraham, she can have everything she wants."
"Ha!" said Wilbraham, dubiously. "I--I don"t think I"d like that exactly. She might want something I didn"t want her to have."
"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, t.i.tle, 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."
[Ill.u.s.tration: WILBRAHAM PAID BEFORE LEAVING THE COURT-ROOM]
And they lived affluently forever afterward, although Midas and his confreres 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.
The eldest son took over the bank accounts, and by the negotiation of several large checks among his friends, each one dated several months ahead, had managed to escape to Venezuela with a comfortable fortune, where, after several revolutions, he found himself in the President"s cabinet as Secretary of the Treasury. He further enriched himself in this office by the private sale of national bonds to innocent investors, prior to his departure for Algiers, and became, before his death, a leading spirit in that interesting colony, and an influential member of the Missionary Society of East Africa.
The second son took the automobiles, and with a pot of paint and eight old life-preservers, relics of the palmy days when his father was a famous yachtsman, so furbished them up that he was able to sell them f.
o. b. to a couple of farmers in central Connecticut for five thousand dollars, which he invested in Steel Common when it was sulking along between 10 and 12 on a margin of five per cent., and, selling out at 84-7/8, he was soon able to retire to the serene joys and quiet pleasures of the Great White Way, along whose verdured slopes he pranked and played until paresis called him at the ripe age of twenty-seven years. But to the youngest son, poor Jack Dinwiddie, by the terms of his father"s will, fell only the residue of the estate after the two brothers had had their shares; in other words, the Angora cat!
It was, indeed, a melancholy situation, for poor Jack, like a great many other sons of men of presumably large wealth, had studied only political economy at college, and of the domestic variety knew nothing. He was an honorary member of the Consumers" League, but of the methods of the Producers" Union he knew little, and here at the age of twenty-two he found himself fatherless, penniless, and without any visible means of support in the line of earning capacity.
"Well, Puss," he said, gloomily, as he gazed at his Angora cat, who was sitting on top of a pile of unpaid bills in Jack"s bachelor apartment, washing his face with his right paw, "it looks to me as if we were up against it. The governor has gone to his last account, my allowance has ceased, and you are the only clear and unenc.u.mbered a.s.set in my possession, barring this last cigarette and two matches loaned to me by a kind gentleman upon the street to whom I applied recently for a light."
He paused and lit the cigarette, while Puss, unmindful of the pathos of the situation, continued his prinking, giving especial attention to his whiskers, brushing them upward from his lips until he bore a not very remote resemblance to the Kaiser himself.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "I SUPPOSE I COULD SELL YOU, BILL"]
"I suppose I could sell you, Bill," the young man went on. "Angora cats, with a pedigree dating back to d.i.c.k Whittington"s time and a bunch of blue ribbons big enough to supply every prohibitionist in the Union with a bowknot for the lapel of his coat, must have some market value, especially in a time like this, when anything resembling beef is worth its weight in radium; but I won"t do it, old man. You"ve been a mighty good cat to me, and as long as there is a drop of chalk and water left in this world you shall have your morning dish of milk."
It was then that a very singular thing happened.
"That"s all I wanted to know, Jack," purred the cat, jumping to the floor and rubbing his sleek sides up against his master"s leg affectionately. "If we are not to be separated, it is up to me to show myself the worthy descendant of a n.o.ble and resourceful ancestry. There is a tradition in our family that no backyard fence has ever been so hard to climb that we couldn"t get over it. Do you know who I am?"
"Why, yes," said Jack, rubbing his eyes in astonishment, for he had never heard the cat speak before. "You are Angora Bill, the Champion Chinchilla of fourteen consecutive annual shows, and the neatest little ratter that ever lived."
"I am more than that," replied the cat, proudly. "I am the direct lineal descendant of the original Puss in Boots, and one of the advance agents of prosperity."
Jacked laughed even in his misery.
"Those days have gone, Puss," he said, wearily. "There are no longer any fairies to help poor beggars like me out of a hole, Bill--"
"That"s what you think," smiled puss, scratching his left ear with his right hind-paw; "but, my dear boy, my great-great-great-great-grandfather was a back-fence piker alongside of myself, who, all unknown to you, am one of the board of directors of the United States Fairy Company, of 3007 Wall Street, New York. If you will do just what I tell you, my boy, we shall emerge from this little embarra.s.sment of ours with flying colors, and spend our declining years in a little onyx bungalow on the corner of Bond Avenue and Easy Street that will make the Vandergilt palace up on the Plaza look like a particularly cheap and self-effacing owl-wagon."