“I’m very thrifty. I have need to be,” said Sibthorp earnestly, and as I knew that his income for the preceding year had been something in the neighbourhood of four hundred dollars, I flashed a warning signal to Cherry, and asked him to do the thing that would make him the happiest.
“After dinner suppose you read us the stuff you’ve been writing.”
“How disrespectful,” said Cherry. “Stuff!”
“Why, if it wouldn’t bore you?” said he, smiling at Cherry.
“Lovely! Perfectly delicious!” said Cherry, and Ethel said,
“It’ll make me think I’m living in a literary atmosphere once more. Since Philip won that prize, he’s simply vegetated. I don’t like it a bit. What’s your story about?”
“It’s a sort of fable. I call it the ‘Two Altruists.’”
We had coffee served out under the maple, and while we were drinking it Sibthorp, after apologising for not being a better reader, began it.
“Wait a minute,” said I, “Here comes Minerva. She doesn’t want to listen, but it’ll go better if we wait until she has gone.”
She had come for the cups and saucers, and she took Ellery’s coffee before he had had a chance to touch it, but no one noticed, he least of all, intent as he was upon disburdening his mind of his fable.
I make no bones of producing it, because we all liked it so well that it seems as if a larger audience might be pleased at its whimsical tone.
“‘Once upon a time,’” he began again, “‘there was a man whose chief happiness came from seeing others happy. He was indeed an absolute altruist.
“‘Now it so fell about that this altruist was a professional writer, and wove tales for the magazines, and one day, being in a happy mood, caused by his having given his last crust and his last shirt to a professional beggar, he wove a story for a competition and was so fortunate as to receive the capital prize of $1,000.00.’”
(“I was thinking of you, Philip, when I wrote that,” said he.)
“‘For a time his joy was unbounded, but after a while the thought came to him of those in this world to whom the money would mean so much more than it did to him, and he essayed to put the thousand dollar bill into his side pocket and walked along the highway, pondering upon the best disposition to make of it.
“‘And in his abstraction he missed his side pocket altogether and the thousand dollar bill fluttered through the air and fell to earth, where it lay in plain sight, if the man had but looked behind him.