I flipped the ends and looked them over a bit, because I saw that was what he expected of me; but the truth is, checks don't interest me much after they've been messed up with red and green stamps.

They're about as enticing as a last year's popular song.
Dad crossed his legs, matched his finger-tips together, and looked at me over his glasses.

Many a man knows that attitude and that look, and so many a man has been as uncomfortable as I began to be, and has felt as keen a sense of impending trouble.

I began immediately searching my memory for some especial brand of devilment that I'd been sampling, but there was nothing doing.

I had been losing some at poker lately, and I'd been away to the bad out at Ingleside; still, I looked him innocently in the eye and wondered what was coming.
"That last check is worthy of particular attention," he said dryly.