scher's eyes on me, that it was
rather absurd to talk about a cash register living. I do not think that
men have ever personified this machine. We talk of ships and engines by
the names we give them and use personal pronouns, generally feminine,
when we speak of them. But did any one ever call a cash register
"Minnie" or talk of it familiarly as "she"?

"He thinks," said Mrs. Ascher, "indeed he is sure--he says his brother
told him----"

"I know," I said. "The machine isn't going to be put on the market at
all. It is to be used simply as a threat to make other people pay what I
should call blackmail."

"That must not be," said Mrs. Ascher.

Her voice was pitched a couple of tones higher than usual. I might
almost say she shrieked.

"It must not be," she repeated, "must not. It is a crime, a vile act,
the murder of a soul."

Cash registers have not got souls. I am as sure of that as I am of
anything.

"That boy," she went on, "that passionate, brave, pure boy, he must not
be dragged down, defiled. His soul----"

It was Tim Gorman's soul then, not the cash registers, which she was
worrying about. Having seen her presentation of the boy's head, having
it at that moment before my eyes, I understood what she meant. But I
was not going to let myself be swept again into the regions of artistic
passion to please Mrs. Ascher.

"Well," I said, "it does seem rather a shady way of making money. But
after all----"

I have mentioned that Mrs. Ascher never stands upright. She went very
near it when I mentioned money.

She threw her head back, flung both her arms out wide, clenched her
fists tightly, and, if the expression is possible, drooped backwards
from her hips. A slightly soiled light-blue overall is not the garment
best suited to set off the airs and attitudes of high tragedy. But Mrs.
Ascher's feelings were strong enough to transfigure even her clothes.

"Money!" she said. "Oh, Money! Is there nothing else? Do you care for,
hope for, see nothing else in the world? What does it matter whether you
make money or not, or how you make it?"

It is only those who are very rich indeed or those who are on the outer
fringe of extreme poverty who can despise money in this whole-hearted
way. The wife of a millionaire--the millionaire himself probably
attaches some value to money because he has to get it--and the regular
tramp can say "Oh, money? Is there nothing else?" The rest of us find
money a useful thing and get wha