"Look for yourself," I say. "There's not a cent in it. I spent the last
this morning."
We walk up and down. We sit down and get up and walk about again. We are
very gloomy. We are bowed down with sorrow and look at each other in
great perplexity.
"There might be one hidden away in a drawer somewhere," I say.
We fly to the drawers.
We pull out thirty drawers and rummage through them. We fling papers in
disorder, higgledy-piggledy, on the floor: what do we care? If only, if
only we find a cent. . . .
Hurrah!
We both, at last, grasp at a cent, as though we would fight for it . . .
we have found a beautiful, large cent. Our eyes gleam and we laugh
through our tears.
"Hurry now," I whisper. "You can go this way . . . through my door. Then
run back quickly up the kitchen stairs, with the biscuits, and put them
on the table. I shall call Petrine, so that she doesn't see. And we
won't tell anybody."
He is down the stairs before I have done speaking. I run after him and
call to him:
"Wasn't it a splendid thing that we found that cent?" I say.
"Yes," he answers, earnestly.
And he laughs for happiness and I laugh too and his legs go like
drumsticks across to the baker's.
From my window, I see him come back, at the same pace, with red cheeks
and glad eyes. He has committed his first crime. He has understood it.
And he has not the sting of remorse in his soul nor the black cockade of
forgiveness in his cap.
The mother of my little boy and I sit until late at night talking about
money, which seems to us the most difficult matter of all.
For our little boy must learn to know the power of money and the glamour
of money and the joy of money. He must earn much money and spend much
money. . . .
Yet there were two people, yesterday, who killed a man to rob him of
four dollars and thirty-seven cents. . . .