ce been Bobby's father's,
snorted and looked up at the stern portrait of old John Burnit; then
he drew from the index-file which he had already placed upon the back
of that desk a gray-tinted envelope which he handed to Bobby with a
silence that was more eloquent than words. It was inscribed:

_To my Son if he is Fool Enough to Take up With Applerod's
Swamp Scheme_

Rather impatiently Bobby tore it open, and on the inside he found:

"When shrewd men persist in passing up an apparently cinch
proposition, don't even try to find out what's the matter with
it. In this six-cylinder age no really good opportunity runs
loose for twenty-four hours."

"If the governor had only arranged to leave me his advice beforehand
instead of afterward," Bobby complained to Agnes Elliston that
evening, "it might have a chance at me."

"The blow has fallen," said Agnes with mock seriousness; "but you must
remember that you brought it on yourself. You have complained to _me_
of your father's carefully-laid plans for your course in progressive
bankruptcy, and he left in my keeping a letter for you covering that
very point."

"_Not_ in a gray envelope, I hope," groaned Bobby.

"_In_ a gray envelope," she replied firmly, going across to her own
desk in the library.

"I had feared," said Bobby dismally, "that sooner or later I should
find he had left letters for me in your charge as well as in
Johnson's, but I had hoped, if that were the case, that at least they
would be in pink envelopes."

She brought to him one of the familiar-looking missives, and Bobby, as
he took it, looked speculatively at the big fireplace, in which, as it
was early fall, comfortable-looking real logs were crackling.

"Don't do it, Bobby," she warned him smiling. "Let's have the fun
together," and she sat beside him on the couch, snuggling close.

The envelope was addressed:

_To My Son Upon his Complaining that His Father's Advice
Comes too Late!_

He opened it, and together they read:

"No boy will believe green apples hurt him until he gets the
stomach-ache. Knowing you to be truly my son, I am sure that
if I gave you advice beforehand you would not believe it. This
way you will."

Bobby smiled grimly.

"I remember one painful incident of about the time I put on
knickerbockers," he mused. "Father told me to keep away from a
rat-trap that he had bought. Of course I caught my hand in it three
minut