A Millionaire at Sixteen by Oliver Optic

"Buy a yacht! " exclaimed Squire Moses Scarburn, a gentleman whose avoirdupois exceeded two hundred pounds, honest weight, as he shook his fat sides with wholesome laughter. "Why not buy an elephant?"

"I am not in want of an elephant just now," replied Louis Belgrave, of whose worldly goods and chattels the stout gentleman was the trustee.

"A yacht is a very expensive plaything, my little joker," added the trustee.

"So is an elephant; besides an elephant is clumsy, and a yacht is not. I can't say that I have the least desire to see the elephant."

"I should as soon have thought of your proposing to buy an elephant as a yacht," continued Squire Scarburn, a shade more seriously.

"An elephant may be a luxury to some people, like the nabobs of India; but my fancy does not lead me in that direction."

"You could put a howdah on his back and ride him all over the State, to the wonder and admiration of great crowds of small boys," said the squire, chuckling as he did habitually, sometimes even when discussing serious subjects.

"I don't care to make any such sensation as the huge beast would produce. He would frighten horses and children, and I might be mulcted in heavy damages, which would not please you any more than it would me," replied the millionaire of sixteen; for such he was, with an income of seventy thousand dollars a year, which was a frightful revenue for a young fellow of his age, to say nothing of a surplus, as the trustee called it, of a hundred thousand or more for any extraordinary expenditure.

His mother was a most excellent woman, rather timid by nature, and made more so by the circumstances which had surrounded her recently. The greatest fear of her present existence was that her beloved son, her only child, would be ruined by his million, though the trustee insisted that there was not the slightest danger of such a calamity.

Though Squire Scarburn held the purse strings, Louis's mother was his legal guardian, and the trustee could refuse to advance money for anything she did not approve. Mrs. Belgrave held the key to the situation; but she was the most indulgent of mothers, and her son had a great influence over her, not only because he was one of the most considerate, devoted, and reasonable young men in the world, but for other reasons which appear in the past history of the family; and practically the young gentleman was his own master.

"Well, Sir Louis Belgrave, an elephant may be expensive in the direction you indicate, and perhaps an elephant is not precisely the beast to carry a young knight-errant about the country. Possibly a mule would be more appropriate and less expensive," continued Squire Scarburn, intensely amused at the picture he was painting at the expense of Louis. "Suppose you buy a mule; and then you will want a donkey for Felix McGavonty, for I conclude you intend to make him your squire."

"Not a bit of it, Uncle Moses," as the two boys mentioned usually called him, for both were his _protégés_; "I want you for my Sancho Panza. Nothing less than a justice of the peace and a man of some weight in the community shall be my squire. Oh, I desire to carry out your brilliant idea in a respectable manner!"

"I certainly have the weight; but don't you think I am a little too stout for an errant squire, though I should do very well for office practice? I weigh over two hundred pounds," replied Uncle Moses, greatly amused at the fancy of his ward; and he enjoyed it none the less because the jest was at his own expense.

"You are not a pound too heavy! " exclaimed Louis. "The fatter you are the more ridiculous the whole thing will be; and I know that is what you are driving at. If you weighed five hundred pounds I should like you all the better for my squire."

"I fear I should not be spry enough for you, Sir Louis, and I must decline the situation in favor of Felix. I shall have no serious objection to the expense of a mule for you and a donkey for Felix. That would not exhaust your income of seventy thousand for this year."

"I don't believe it would, sir. Why, the other day you were making fun of me because you could not see how I was to spend even half of my income! The fact of it is, Uncle Moses, you have invested the million and more too well, five and six per cent; and you are going to make it hard work for me to get away with what is coming to me every twelvemonth."

"The misfortune is, Sir Louis, that you and your mother are not accustomed to this plethora of income, and you have not yet got a fair hold on the seventy thousand a year. You don't exactly know which way to turn to make a big hole in your revenue. But I have no doubt you will improve in good time," chuckled the trustee.

"I have no idea of being whipped out by an income, however large it may be," replied Louis, still in the best of humor, in spite of the heavy burden imposed upon him by Fate and his grandfather of spending his income. "I have projects and schemes in my head, Uncle Moses, that would make you dizzy if I should mention them; and as I wish you to have a level head I will not say anything at all about them yet a while."

"A million dollars, more or less, is a sufficiently large fortune for any American citizen to possess," continued the trustee, smoothing down his fat face for the first time in a full hour, as though he intended to say something more serious.

"I should say that a man with a million ought to escape starvation, if his money is as well invested as you have placed mine," replied Louis.