Peter by Francis Hopkinson Smith — Read

The following morning Jack walked into Arthur Breen's private office while his uncle was reading his mail, and laid the package containing the ten bonds on his desk. So far as their borrowing capacity was concerned, he could have walked up the marble steps of any broker's office or bank on either side of the street -- that is, wherever he was known, and he was still remembered by many of them -- thrust the package through the cashier's window, and walked down again with a certified check for their face value in his pocket.

But the boy had other ends in view. Being human, and still smarting under his uncle's ridicule and contempt, he wanted to clear his own name and character; being loyal to his friend's memory and feeling that Garry's reputation must be at least patched up -- and here in Breen's place and before the man who had so bitterly denounced it; and being above all tender-hearted and gallant where a woman, and a sorrowing one, was concerned, he must give Corinne and the child a fair and square start in the house of Breen, with no overdue accounts to vex her except such petty ones as a small life insurance and a few uncollected commissions could liquidate.