not going
to ask anything I'm forbidden to know, but I want some advice. Now,
how shall I learn who it is?"

"Well," replied Agnes thoughtfully, "about the only plan I can suggest
is that you ask your father's legal and business advisers."

He positively beamed down at her.

"You're the dandy girl, all right," he said admiringly. "Now, if you
would only----"

"Bobby," she interrupted him, "do you know that we are standing up
here in a box, with something like a thousand people, possibly, turned
in our direction?"

He suddenly realized that they were alone, the others having filed out
into the promenade, and, placing a chair for her in the extreme rear
corner of the box, where he could fence her off, sat down beside her.
He began to describe to her the plan of Silas Trimmer, and as he went
on his enthusiasm mounted. The thing had caught his fancy. If he could
only increase the profits of the John Burnit Store in the very first
year, it would be a big feather in his cap. It would be precisely what
his father would have desired! Agnes listened attentively all through
the fourth act to his glowing conception of what the reorganized John
Burnit Company would be like. He was perfectly contented now. His
headache was gone; such occasional glimpses as he caught of the play
were delightful; Mr. Trimmer was a genius; the Traders' Club a
fascinating introduction to a new life; Starlett and Allstyne a joyous
relief to him after the sordid cares of business. In a word, Agnes was
with him.

"Do you think your father would accept this proposition?" she asked
him after he was all through.

"I think he would at my age," decided Bobby promptly.

"That is, if he had been brought up as you have," she laughed. "I
think I should study a long time over it, Bobby, before I made any
such important and sweeping change as this must necessarily be."

"Oh, yes," he agreed with an assumption of deep conservatism; "of
course I'll think it over well, and I'll take good, sound advice on
it."

"I have never seen Mr. Trimmer," mused Agnes. "I seldom go into his
store, for there always seems to me something shoddy about the whole
place; but to-morrow I think I shall make it a point to secure a
glimpse of him."

Bobby was delighted. Agnes had always been interested in whatever
interested him, but never so absorbedly so as now, it seemed. He
almost forgot the stranger in his pleasure. He forgot him still more
when, dismissing his chauffeur,