ng Wix was quite right about his mother's
indifference. He called to her as he went down to early breakfast that
he might not be back for a few days, and she sleepily answered. "All
right." So Clifford and his instructor went to the fair, and the more
experienced spendthrift showed the amateur how to get rid of his
money, to their mutual gratification.

Back of the Streets of Cairo, on the closing day, Wix and Gilman,
hunting a drink, found a neat young man with piercing black eyes and
black hair, who upon the previous days had been making a surreptitious
hand-book on the races. Just now he was advising an interested group
of men that money would not grow in their pockets.

"If your eye is quicker than my hand you get my dollars," he
singsonged as he deftly shifted three English walnut shells about on a
flimsy folding stand. "If my hand is quicker than your eye, I get your
dollars. Here they go, three in a row. They're all set, and here's a
double sawbuck for some gentleman with a like amount of wealth and a
keen eye and a little courage. Where, oh, where, is the little pea?"

The location of the little pea was so obvious that it seemed a shame
to take the black-eyed young man's money, for just as he had stopped
moving the shells, Wix and Gilman, pressing up, saw that the edge of
the left-hand shell had rested upon the rubber "pea" and had
immediately closed over it. Notwithstanding this slip on the part of
the operator, there seemed some reluctance on the part of the audience
to invest; instead, with what might have seemed almost suspicious
eagerness, they turned toward the new-comers. Gilman, flushed of face
and muddy of eye, and hiccoughing slightly--though Wix, who had drunk
with him drink for drink, was clean and normal and his usual jovial,
clear-eyed self--hastily pressed in before any one else should take
advantage of the golden chance.

"Don't, Gilman," cautioned Wix, and grabbed him by the arm, but
Clifford, still eager, jerked his arm away; and it was strange how all
those who had been packed around the board made room for him.

"Here's the boy with the nerve and the money," commented the
black-eyed one as he took Mr. Gilman's twenty and flaunted it in the
air with his own. "Now lift up the little shell. If the little pea is
under it you get the twin twenties. Lovely twins!" He laughed and
kissed them lightly. "It's only a question," he shouted loudly, as
Gilman prepared to make his choice, "of whether y