Seventeen [64]
``My soul!'' gasped Mr. Baxter. ``I thought I knew you pretty well, but you talk like a stranger to ME! What is all this? What you WANT?''
``A dress-suit!'' said William.
He had intended to say a great deal more before coming to the point, but, although through nervousness he had lost some threads of his rehearsed plea, it seemed to him that he was getting along well and putting his case with some distinction and power. He was surprised and hurt, therefore, to hear his father utter a wordless shout in a tone of wondering derision.
`I have more to say--'' William began.
But Mr. Baxter cut him off. ``A dress-suit!'' he cried. ``Well, I'm glad you were talking about SOMETHING, because I honestly thought it must be too much sun!''
At this, the troubled William brought his eyes down from the porch roof and forgot his rehearsal. He lifted his hand appealingly. ``Father,'' he said, ``I GOT to have one!''
`` `Got to'!'' Mr. Baxter laughed a laugh that chilled the supplicant through and through. ``At your age I thought I was lucky if I had ANY suit that was fit to be seen in. You're too young, Willie. I don't want you to get your mind on such stuff, and if I have my way, you won't have a dress-suit for four years more, anyhow.''
``Father, I GOT to have one. I got to have one right away!'' The urgency in William's voice was almost tearful. ``I don't ask you to have it made, or to go to expensive tailors, but there's plenty of good ready-made ones that only cost about forty dollars; they're advertised in the paper. Father, wouldn't you spend just forty dollars? I'll pay it back when I'm in business; I'll work--''
Mr. Baxter waved all this aside. ``It's not the money. It's the principle that I'm standing for, and I don't intend--''
``Father, WON'T you do it?''
``No, I will not!''
William saw that sentence had been passed and all appeals for a new trial denied. He choked, and rushed into the house without more ado.
``Poor boy!'' his mother said.
``Poor boy nothing!'' fumed Mr. Baxter. ``He's about lost his mind over that Miss Pratt. Think of his coming out here and starting a regular debating society declamation before his mother and father! Why, I never heard anything like it in my life! I don't like to hurt his feelings, and I'd give him anything I could afford that would do him any good, but all he wants it for now is to splurge around in at this party before that little yellow-haired girl! I guess he can wear the kind of clothes most of the other boys wear--the kind _I_ wore at parties-- and never thought of wearing anything else. What's the world getting to be like? Seventeen years old and throws a fit because he can't have a dress-suit!''
Mrs. Baxter looked thoughtful. ``But--but suppose he felt he couldn't go to the dance unless he wore one, poor boy--''
``All the better,'' said Mr. Baxter, firmly. ``Do him good to keep away and get his mind on something else.''
``Of course,'' she suggested, with some timidity, ``forty dollars isn't a great deal of money, and a ready-made suit, just to begin with--''
Naturally, Mr. Baxter perceived whither she was drifting. ``Forty dollars isn't a thousand,'' he interrupted, ``but what you want to throw it away for? One reason a boy of seventeen oughtn't to have evening clothes is the way he behaves with ANY clothes. Forty dollars! Why, only this summer he sat down on Jane's open paint-box, twice in one week!''
``Well--Miss Pratt IS going away, and the dance will be her last night. I'm afraid it would really hurt him to miss it. I remember once, before we were engaged--that evening before papa took me abroad, and you--''
``It's no use, mamma,'' he said. ``We were both in the twenties--why, _I_ was six years older than Willie, even then. There's no comparison at all. I'll let him order a dress-suit on his twenty-first birthday and not a minute before. I don't believe in it, and I intend to see that he gets all this stuff out of his system. He's got to learn some hard sense!''
Mrs. Baxter shook her