y could send it through the mails."

Bobby frowned. The certain method to have him make allowances for a
man was to attack that man. When he arrived at the Idlers' Club at
noon, however, he was given another opportunity for Christian charity.
Nick Allstyne and Payne Winthrop and Stanley Rogers were discussing
something with great indignation when he joined them, and Nick drew
him over to the bulletin board, where was displayed the application of
Frank L. Sharpe, proposed by Clarence Smythe, Silas Trimmer's
son-in-law, and seconded by another undesirable who had twice been
posted for non-payment of dues.

"There is only one thing about this that commends itself to me, and
that is the immaculate and colossal nerve of the proceeding," declared
Nick indignantly. "The next thing you know somebody will propose Sam
Stone."

At this they all laughed. The Idlers' Club was the one institution
that stood in no awe of the notorious "boss" of the city and of the
state; a man who had never held an office, but who, until the past two
years, had controlled all offices; whose methods were openly
dishonest; who held underground control of every public utility and a
score of private enterprises. The idea of Stone as an applicant for
membership in the Idlers' Club was a good joke, but the actual
application of Sharpe was too serious for jesting. Nevertheless, all
this turmoil over the mere name of the man worked a strange reaction
in Bobby Burnit.

"After all, business is business," he declared to himself, "and I
don't see where Sharpe's personality figures in this Brightlight
Electric deal, especially since I am to have control."

Accordingly he directed Chalmers and Johnson to make a thorough
investigation of that corporation.

CHAPTER XIV

BOBBY ENTERS A BUSINESS ALLIANCE, A SOCIAL ENTANGLEMENT AND A QUARREL
WITH AGNES

The report of Mr. Johnson and Mr. Chalmers upon the Brightlight
Electric Company was a complicated affair, but, upon the whole, highly
favorable. It was an old establishment, the first electric company
that had been formed in the city, and it held, besides some minor
concessions, an ancient franchise for the exclusive supply of twelve
of the richest down-town blocks, this franchise, made by a generous
board of city fathers, still having twenty years to run. The concern's
equipment was old and much of it needed renewal, but its financial
affairs were in good shape, except for a mortgage of a hundred
th