urn to double cross this Trimmer you've got another think coming.
He's sunk his fangs in the business he's been after all his life, and
now you couldn't pry it away from him with a jimmy. You know what I
told you about him."

"I know," said Bobby wearily. "But honestly, Biff, did you ever see me
go into a game where I was a loser in the end?"

"Not till this one," confessed Biff.

"And this isn't the end," retorted Bobby.

He knew that when he made such a confident assertion that he had
nothing upon which to base it; that he was talking vaguely and at
random; but he also knew the intense desire that had arisen in him to
reverse conditions upon the man who had waited until the father died
to wrest that father's pride from the son; and in some way he felt
coming strength. In Biff's present frame of conviction Bobby was
pleased enough to drop him in front of Kid Mills' obscure abode, and
turn with a sudden hungry impulse in the direction of Agnes. At the
Ellistons', when the chauffeur was about to slow up, Bobby in a panic
told him to drive straight on. In the course of half an hour he came
back again, and this time pride alone--fear of what his chauffeur
might think--determined him to stop. With much trepidation he went up
to the door. Agnes was just preparing to go out, and she came down to
him in the front parlor.

"This is only a business call," he confessed with as much appearance
of gaiety as he could summon under the circumstance. "I've come around
to see my trustee."

"So soon?" she said, with quick sympathy in her voice. "I'm _so_
sorry, Bobby! But I suppose, after all, the sooner it happened the
better. Tell me all about it. What was the cause of it?"

"You wouldn't marry me," charged Bobby. "If you had this never would
have happened."

She shook her head and smiled, but she laid her hand upon his arm and
drew closer to him.

"I'm afraid it would, Bobby. You might have asked my advice, but I
expect you wouldn't have taken it."

"I guess you're right about that," admitted Bobby; "but if you'd only
married me---- Honest, Agnes, when are you going to?"

"I shall not commit myself," she replied, smiling up at him rather
wistfully.

"There's somebody else," declared Bobby, instantly assured by this
evasiveness that the unknown had something to do with the matter.

"If there were, it would be my affair entirely, wouldn't it?" she
wanted to know, still smiling.

"No!" he declared emphatically. "It wou