lly. "It isn't very
often that I can give you a business tip, but this is one of the times
when I can. When John Raymer died, he left an undivided half of his
estate to his wife, the other half to be shared equally by the two
children. At the present moment, every dollar the entire family has is
invested in the iron plant. So, you see, I know what I am doing."

Jasper Grierson turned the leaf of a calendar-pad and made a brief
memorandum.

"I _savez_: I'll break the three-cornered syndicate for you."

"You will do nothing of the kind," asserted the radiant daughter of men,
with serene assurance. "You will let Mr. Raymer get himself into hot
water, as you call it, and then, when I say the word, you'll reach in
and pull him out."

"Oh, that's the how of it, is it? All right; anything you say goes as it
lays. But I'm going to make one condition, this time: you'll have to
keep cases on the game yourself, and say when. I can't be bothered
keeping the run of your society tea-parties."

"I don't want you to. Don't be late for dinner: we are going to the
Rodneys' for the evening."

When she was gone, the president selected another of the overgrown
cigars from a box in the desk drawer, lighted it, and tilted back in the
big arm-chair to envelop himself in a cloud of smoke. It was his single
expensive habit--the never-empty box of Brobdingnagian cigars in the
drawer--and the indulgence helped him to push the Yellow-Dog period into
a remoter past.

After a time the smoke cloud became articulate, rumbling forth
chucklings and Elizabethan oaths, mingling with musings idiomatic and
profane. "By God, I believe she thought she was fooling me--I do, for a
fact! But it's too thin. Of course, she wants to make the women kow-tow,
but that ain't all there is to it--not by a jugful. But it's all right:
she plays her own hand, and she's bully good and able to play it. If
she's after Raymer's scalp, he might as well get ready to wear a wig,
right now. I'll back her to win, every time."

Accordingly, when Mr. Edward Raymer came out of the president's room at
the Farmers' and Merchants' Bank the following morning, he was treading
upon air. For in his mind's eye there was a fair picture of a great and
successful industry to be built upon the substantial extension of credit
promised by the capitalist whose presence chamber he had just quitted.

XIX

LOSS AND GAIN

Striving feebly as one who gathers up the shards and fragments