"I know," said Bobby. "I have been too willing to take everybody's word, I guess; but I have always been able to do that in my crowd, and it is rather a dash to me to find that in business you can not do it.

However, I have reformed."

He said this so self-confidently that Agnes laughed.

"Yes," she admitted, "you are convinced that Silas Trimmer is a thief and a rascal, and you would not take his word for anything. You are convinced that Applerod's judgment is useless and that your own does not amount to much, but I still believe that the next plausible looking and plausible talking man who comes to you can engage you in any business that seems fair on the surface."

"I deserve what you say," he confessed, but somewhat piqued, nevertheless. "However, I don't think you are giving me credit for having learned any lesson at all. Why, only to-day you ought to have heard me turning down a proposition to finance a new and improved washing-machine. Sounded very good and feasible, too. The man was a good talker and thoroughly earnest and honest, I am sure. I really did want to help the fellow start his business, but somehow or other I could not seem to like the idea of washing-machines; such a sudsy sort of business."

Agnes laughed the sort of a laugh that always made him want to catch hold of her, but if he had any intentions in that respect they were interfered with just now by Uncle Dan, who strolled into the parlor in his dressing-jacket and with a cigar tilted in the corner of his mouth.

"How's the Commercial Board of Strategy coming on?" he inquired as he offered Bobby a cigar.

"Fine!" declared Bobby; "except that it can not think of a stratagem."

"I think you are very selfish not to help us out, Uncle Dan," declared Agnes. "With all your experience you ought to be able to suggest something for Bobby to go into that would be a nice business and perfectly safe and make him lots of money without requiring too much experience to start with."

"Young lady," said Uncle Dan severely, "if I knew a business of that kind I'd sell some of the stock of my factory and go into it myself; but I don't. The fact is, there are no business snaps lying around loose. You have to make one, and that takes not just money, but work and brains."

"I'm perfectly willing to work," declared Bobby.

"And you don't mean to say that he hasn't brains!" objected Agnes.

"No-o-o," admitted Uncle Dan. "I am quite sure that Bobby has brains, but they have not been quite--a--a--well, say solidified, yet. You're not allowed to smoke in this parlor, Bobby. Mrs. Elliston wants a quiet home game of whist; sent me to bring you up."

Secretly, old Dan Elliston was himself puzzling a great deal over a career for Bobby, but up to the moment had not found anything that he thought safe to propose. Not having a good idea he was averse to discussing any project whatsoever, and so, each time that he was consulted upon the subject, he was as evasive as this about it, and Bobby each morning dragged perplexedly into the handsome offices of the defunct Applerod Addition, where Applerod and Johnson were still working a solid eight hours a day to straighten out the affairs of that unfortunate venture.

Those offices were the dullest quarters Bobby knew, for they contained nothing but the dead ashes of bygone money; but one morning business picked up with a jerk. He found a mine investment agent awaiting him when he arrived, and before he was through with this clever conversationalist a man was in to get him to buy a racing stable.

Affairs grew still more brisk as the morning wore on. Within the next two hours he had politely but firmly declined to buy a partnership in a string of bucket shops, to refinance a defunct irrigation company, to invest in a Florida plantation, to take a tip on copper, and to back an automobile factory which was to enter business upon some designs of a new engine stolen by a discharged workman.

"How did all these people find out that I have two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to invest?" impatiently demanded Bobby, after he had refused the allurements of a patent-medicine scheme, the last of that morning's lot.

There followed a dense silence, in the midst of which old Johnson looked up from the book in which he was entering a long, long list of items on the wrong side of the profit and loss account, and jerked his lean thumb angrily in the direction of Applerod.

"Ask him," he said.

Chubby-faced old Applerod, excessively meek of spirit to-day, suffered a moment of embarra.s.sment under the accusing eyes of young Burnit.

"The newspapers, sir," he admitted, twisting uncomfortably in his swivel chair. "The reporters were here yesterday afternoon with the idea that since you haven't announced any future plans, the failure of our real estate scheme--_my_ real estate scheme," he corrected in response to a snort and a glare from Johnson--"had left you penniless.

Of course I wasn't going to let them go away with that impression, so I told them that you had another two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to invest, with probably more to follow, if necessary."

"And of course," groaned Bobby, "it is all in print, with ingenious tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs."

From a drawer in his desk Johnson quietly drew copies of the morning papers, each one folded carefully to an article in which, under wide variations of embarra.s.sing head-lines, the facts of Bobby's latest frittering of his father's good money were once more facetiously, even gleefully, set forth and embellished, with added humorous speculations as to how he would probably cremate his new fund. Bobby was about to turn into his own room to absorb his humiliation in secret when Applerod hesitantly stopped him.

"Another thing, sir," he said. "Mr. Frank L. Sharpe called up early this morning to know when he would find you in, and I took the liberty of telling him that you would very likely be here at ten o'clock."

Bobby frowned slightly at the mention of that name. He knew of Sharpe vaguely as a man whose private life had been so scandalous that society had ceased to shudder at his name--it simply refused to hear it; a man who had even secured advancement by obligingly divorcing his first wife so that the notorious Sam Stone could marry her.

"What did he want?" he asked none too graciously.

"I don't know, sir," said Applerod; "but he telephoned me again just as you were getting rid of this last caller. I told him that you were here and he said that he would be right over."

Bobby made no reply to this, but went thoughtfully into his room and closed the door after him. In less than five minutes the door opened, and Mr. Applerod, his voice fairly oily with obsequiousness, announced Mr. Frank L. Sharpe! Why, here is a man whose name was in the papers every morning, noon and night! Mr. Sharpe had taken a trip to New York on behalf of the Gas Company; Mr. Sharpe had returned from his trip to New York on behalf of the Gas Company; Mr. Sharpe had entertained at the Hotel Spender; Mr. Sharpe had made a speech; Mr. Sharpe had been interviewed; Mr. Sharpe had been indisposed for half a day!

Quite prepossessing of appearance was Mr. Sharpe; a tall, rather slight gentleman, whose features no one ever a.n.a.lyzed because the eyes of the observer stopped, fascinated, at his mustache. That wonderful adornment was wonderfully luxuriant, gray and curly, pretty to an extreme, and kept most fastidiously trimmed, and it lifted when he smiled to display a most engaging row of white, even teeth. Centered upon this magnificent combination the gaze never roved to the animal nose, to the lobeless ears, to the watery blue eyes half obscured by the lower lids. He was immaculately, though a shade too youthfully, dressed in a gray frock suit, with pearl-gray spats upon his shoes, and he was most charmed to see young Mr. Burnit.

"You have a very neat little suite of offices here, Mr. Burnit," he commented, seating himself gracefully and depositing his gray hat, his gray cane and his gray gloves carefully to one side of him upon Bobby's desk.

"I'm afraid they are a little too nice for practical purposes," Bobby confessed. "I have found that business isn't a parlor game."

"Precisely what I came to see you about," said Mr. Sharpe. "I understand you have been a trifle unfortunate, but that is because you did not go into the regular channels. An established and paying corporation is the only worth-while proposition, and if you have not yet settled upon an investment I would like to suggest that you become interested in our local Brightlight Electric Company."

"I thought there was no gas or electric stock for sale," said Bobby slowly, clinging still to a vague impression that he had gained five or six years before.

"Not to the public," replied Mr. Sharpe, smiling, "and there would not have been privately except for the necessity of a reorganization. The Brightlight needs more capital for expansion, and I have too many other interests, even aside from the Consumers' Electric Light and Power and the United Gas and Fuel Companies, to spare the money myself--and the Brightlight is too good to let the general public in on." He smiled again, quite meaningly this time. "This is quite confidential, of course," he added.

Bobby bowed his acknowledgment of the confidence which had been reposed in him, and generously began at once to reconstruct his impressions of the impossible Mr. Sharpe. You couldn't believe all you heard, you know.

"The Brightlight," went on Mr. Sharpe, "is at present capitalized for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and is a good ten-per-cent.-dividend-paying stock at the present moment; but its business is not growing, and I propose to take in sufficient capital to raise the Brightlight to a half-million-dollar corporation, clear off its indebtedness and project certain extensions. I understand that you have the necessary amount, and here is the proposition I offer you. Brightlight stock is now quoted at a hundred and seventy-two. We will double its present capitalization, and you may take up the extra two hundred and fifty thousand dollars' worth of its stock at par, or about three-fifths of its actual value. That is a bargain to be snapped at, Mr. Burnit."

Did Bobby Burnit snap at this proposition? He did not. Bobby had learned caution through his two bitter failures, and of caution is born wisdom.

"Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars' worth of stock in a five-hundred-thousand-dollar corporation won't do for me," he declared with a firmness that was pleasant to his own ears. "I don't care to go into any proposition in which I have not the controlling interest."

Mr. Sharpe, remembering the details of Bobby's Trimmer and Company experiment, hastily turned his imminent smile of amus.e.m.e.nt into a merely engaging one.

"I don't blame you, Mr. Burnit," said he; "but to show you that I am more willing to trust you than you are to trust me, if you care to go into this thing I'll agree to sell you from one to ten shares of my individual stock--at its present market value, of course."

"That's very good of you," agreed Bobby, suddenly ashamed of his ungenerous stand in the face of this sportsmanlike att.i.tude. "But really I've had cause for timidity."

"Caution is not cowardice," said Mr. Sharpe in a tone which conveyed a world of friendly approbation. "This matter must be taken up very soon, however, and I can not allow you more than a week to investigate. I'd be pleased to receive your legal and business advisers at any time you may nominate, and to give them any advantage you may wish."

"I'll investigate it at least, and I thank you for giving me the opportunity," said Bobby, really very contrite that he had been doing Sharpe such a mental injustice all these years. "By the way," he suddenly added, "has Silas Trimmer anything whatever to do with this proposition?"

Mr. Sharpe smiled.

"Mr. Trimmer does not own one share of stock in the Brightlight Electric Company, nor will he own it," he answered.

"In that case," said Bobby, "I am satisfied to consider your offer without fear of heart-disease."

The departing caller met an incoming one in the outer office, and Agnes, sweeping into Bobby's room, breathlessly gasped:

"That was Frank Sharpe!"

"The same," admitted Bobby, smiling down at her and taking both her hands.

"I never saw him so closely," she declared. "Really, he's quite distinguished-looking."