"Good-by, Bojo," she said softly.

The next moment he was whirled away. When he reached the Court he remembered for the first time his commission and, stopping at the desk, he handed the letter absent-mindedly to Della, saying,

"If you're going out, Della, mail this."

She burst out laughing, with her irresistible Irish smile.

"What are you laughing at?" he said, surprised.

"You're always up to tricks, Mr. Crocker," she said, looking at the inscription.

"What do you mean?" he asked, puzzled, and, perceiving the cause of her merriment, he s.n.a.t.c.hed the envelope and glanced at it. It was addressed to him. Covered with confusion he fled up to his room in a fever of antic.i.p.ation and wild hope.

Dear Bojo:

Forgive me for being a horrid, spiteful little cat. I am sorry but you are very stupid--_very_! Please forgive me.

PATSIE.

P.S. As soon as the wedding is over, we come to New York.

Will you come and see me there--and I'll promise to behave.

DRINA.

He went to bed in the seventh heaven of delight, repeating to himself a hundred times every word of this letter, turning each phrase over and over for favorable interpretation. It seemed to him that never had he spent such deliciously happy days as the last two.

CHAPTER XXIV.

PATSIE APPEALS FOR HELP

Meanwhile Fred and Louise returned. He went to see them at a fashionable hotel where they were staying temporarily. The great rooms and the large salon on the corner, overlooking the serried flight of houses and factories toward the river must have cost at least fifteen dollars a day. Louise went into the bedroom presently to her hairdresser, closing the door.

"Congratulations, Prince," said Bojo laughing, but with a certain intention to approach serious matters. "The royal suite is charming."

"Remember I'm a married man," said DeLancy, the incorrigible, with a laugh. "Aren't you ashamed to try and lecture me?"

"Have you discovered a gold mine?" said Bojo.

"Oh! I got in on two or three good things last Summer," said Fred, who broke off in some confusion at perceiving that he had just divulged to his friend that he had been trying his fortune again in Wall Street.

"So that's it," said Bojo grimly. "Thought you'd sworn off."

"I never did," said DeLancy obstinately.

"It's not my affair, Fred," said Bojo finally. "Only do go slow, old fellow; we're neither of us great manipulators and what comes slowly, goes with a rush."

"Honest, Bojo, I am careful," said Fred with a show of conviction. "No more ten per cent. margins and no more wild-cat chances. If I buy, it's on good information, no plunging."

"Are you sure?"

"Oh, absolutely! I take the solemn oath!" said Fred with a face to convince a meeting of theologians.

"And no margins?"

"Oh, conservative margins!"

"What do you call conservative?"

"Twenty-five points--twenty points naturally."

Bojo shook his head.

"What are you going to do, live here?"

"Of course not. We are looking around for an apartment for the Winter."

Bojo wanted to know what Louise intended, whether she had made up her mind to leave the stage or not, but he did not know quite how to approach the subject. As he studied DeLancy, he thought he looked irrepressibly happy and indifferent to what lay ahead. He wondered if Fred had made any approaches to his old friends with a view to their accepting his wife.

"Will Louise stay here too?" he asked finally.

"Naturally."

"Is--is she giving up her career?" he said hesitatingly.

DeLancy looked rather embarra.s.sed. He did not reply at first.

"I have left that to Louise herself. It's her decision. For the present nothing is settled, not as yet."

Bojo felt the embarra.s.sment that possessed him. He had come to ask a score of questions. He started to leave with the feeling that he had found out nothing. At the noise of his going, Louise came out of the room with her hair down. Probably she had been listening. She said good-by to him with extra cordiality, with an ironical look in her eyes.

"Mind you look us up after."

"Yes, yes."

Fred accompanied him to the elevator.

"As soon as we are settled we'll have a spree," he said with an attempt at the old gaiety.

"Of course."

Bojo went off shrugging his shoulders, saying to himself, "Where will it all end?"

During the Summer a marked change had come over industrial conditions, a feeling of something ominous was in the air, a vague and undefined threat impending. At the factory a fifth of the machines were idle and Garnett was moodily contemplating a general reduction in salaries. Bojo scarcely paid any attention to Wall Street matters now, but he knew that the movement downward of values had been slow and gradual and that prophecies of dark days were current. Matters with Marsh were going badly. Advertisers were deserting the paper, there had been several minor strikes with costly readjustments. Roscoe seemed to have lost his early enthusiasm, to be increasingly moody, impatient and quick to take offense. The reasons given for the business depression were many, over capitalization, timidity of the small investors due to the exposure of great corporations, distrust of radical political reforms. Whatever the causes, the receding tide had come. People were apprehensive, dispirited, talking poverty. Granning held that the country was paying for the sins of the great financial adventurers and the cost of the giddy structures they had thrown up. Marsh from the knowledge of his newspaper world, held that below all was the coalescing power of great banking systems, arrayed against the government on one side and on the other, waiting their opportunity to crush the new-risen financial idea of the Trust Company organized to deal in speculative ventures denied to them. When Bojo in his simplicity asked why in a great growing nation of boundless resources, a panic should ever be necessary, each sought to explain with confusing logic which did not convince at all. Only from it he gathered that above the great productive mechanism of the nation was an artificial structure, in the possession of powerful groups able to control the sources of credit on which the sources of production depend.