To the Last Penny

THOMAS LEIGH, ex-boy, considered the dozen neckties before him a long time, and finally decided to wait until after breakfast.
It was his second day at home and his third day out of college. Already his undergraduate life seemed far away. His triumphs—of personality rather than of scholarship—lingered as a luminous mist that softened the sterner realities and mellowed them goldenly. When one is young reminiscences of one's youth are apt to take on a tinge of melancholy, but Tommy, not having breakfasted, shook off the mood determinedly. He was two hundred and fifty-five months old; therefore, he decided that no great man ever crosses a bridge until he comes to it. Tommy's bridge was still one long joy-ride ahead. The sign, "Slow down to four miles an hour!" was not yet in sight. The selection of the necktie was a serious matter because he was to lunch at Sherry's with the one sister and the younger of the two cousins of Rivington Willetts.