a sure-enough character! Lordy, but I'd love to paint
that face!... So-long, son."

The car swung around the drive and roared away. Larry mounted to the
piazza. Dick was waiting for him, and excitedly drew him down to one
corner that crimson ramblers had woven into a nook for confidences.

"Captain, old scout," he said in a low, happy voice, "I've just told
sis. Put the whole proposition up to her, just as you told me. She
took it like a regular fellow. Your whole idea was one hundred per cent
right. Sis is inside now getting off that invitation to Miss Cameron,
asking her to come out day after to-morrow."

Larry involuntarily caught the veranda railing. "I hope it works
out--for the best," he said.

"Oh, it will--no doubt of it!" cried the exultant Dick. "And, Captain,
if it does, it'll be all your doing!"

CHAPTER XXIII

When Miss Sherwood's invitation reached Maggie, Barney and Old Jimmie
were with her. The pair had growled a lot, though not directly at
Maggie, at the seeming lack of progress Maggie had made during the past
week. Barney was a firm enough believer in his rogue's creed of first
getting your fish securely hooked; but, on the other hand, there was the
danger, if the hooked fish be allowed to remain too long in the water,
that it would disastrously shake itself free of the barb and swim away.
That was what Barney was afraid had been happening with Dick Sherwood.
Therefore he was thinking of returning to his abandoned scheme of
selling stock to Dick. He might get Dick's money in that way, though of
course not so much money, and of course not so safely.

And another item which for some time had not been pleasing Barney was
that Larry Brainard had not yet been finally taken care of, either by
the police or by that unofficial force to which he had given orders.
So he had good reason for permitting himself the relaxation of scowling
when he was not on public exhibition.

But when Maggie, after reading the invitation, tossed it, together with
a note from Dick, across to Barney without comment, the color of his
entire world changed for that favorite son of Broadway. The surly
gloom of the end of a profitless enterprise became magically an aurora
borealis of superior hopes:--no, something infinitely more substantial
than any heaven-painting flare of iridescent colors.

"Maggie, it's the real thing! At last!" he cried.

"What is it?" asked Old Jimmie.

Barney gave him the letter. Jimmie read i