Then, when
the other children cried because they did not get anything, and the
parents affected surprise (as if they really believed in the venerable
fiction), Johnny was too manly to utter a whimper: he would simply
slip out of the back door, and engage in traffic with affluent
orphans; disposing of woolly horses, tin whistles, marbles, tops,
dolls, and sugar archangels, at a ruinous discount for cash. He
continued these provident courses for nine long years, always banking
his accretions with scrupulous care. Everybody predicted he would one
day be a merchant prince or a railway king; and some added he would
sell his crown to the junk-dealers.
His unthrifty brother, meanwhile, kept growing worse and worse. He was
so careless of wealth--so so wastefully extravagant of lucre--that
Johnny felt it his duty at times to clandestinely assume control of
the fraternal finances, lest the habit of squandering should wreck the
fraternal moral sense. It was plain that Charles had entered upon the
broad road which leads from the cradle to the workhouse--and that he
rather liked the travelling. So profuse was his prodigality that there
were grave suspicions as to his method of acquiring what he so openly
disbursed. There was but one opinion as to the melancholy termination
of his career--a termination which he seemed to regard as eminently
desirable.
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