At seven o'clock that evening Frank's mother heard about it, and later Uncle Seneca.
“What'd I tell you, Cowperwood?” he asked. “He has stuff in him, that youngster. Look out for him.”
Mrs. Cowperwood looked at her boy curiously at dinner. Was this the son she had nursed at her bosom not so very long before? Surely he was developing rapidly.
“Well, Frank, I hope you can do that often,” she said.
“I hope so, too, ma,” was his reply.
Auction sales were not every day, however, and his home grocer was open to the transactions not every time, but from the very first young Cowperwood knew how to make money.
He took subscriptions for a boys' paper; sold a new kind of ice-skate, and once organized a band of neighborhood youths into a union for the purpose of purchasing their summer straw hats. It was not his idea that he could get rich by saving. From the first he had the notion that spending was better.
It was in this year, or a little earlier, that he began to take an interest in girls. Being good-looking and magnetic himself, it was not difficult for him to attract the sympathetic interest of those in whom he was interested. A twelve-year old girl, Patience Barlow[19], who lived nearby, was the first to attract his attention or be attracted by him. She was a Quakeress, the daughter of Quaker parents. However, she liked this self-reliant, self-sufficient, straight-spoken boy.
One day, after an exchange of glances from time to time, he said, with a smile and the courage that was innate in him: “You live nearby, don't you?”
“Yes,” she replied, a little flustered, “I live at number one-forty-one.”
“I know the house,” he said. “I've seen you go in there. You go to the same school my sister does, don't you? Aren't you Patience Barlow?” He had heard some of the boys speak her name.
“Yes. How do you know?”
“Oh, I've heard,” he smiled. “I've seen you. Do you like licorice?”
He fished in his coat and pulled out some fresh sticks.
“Thank you,” she said, sweetly, taking one.
“Don't you know my sister, Anna Cowperwood?” he recurred. “She's in a lower grade than you are, but I thought maybe you might have seen her.”
“I think I know who she is. I've seen her coming home from school.”
“I live right over there,” he confided, pointing to his own home, as if she didn't know.