r, who is a prude about bills, says that all the
business of the country is done on credit.... Now you're not going to be
silly, are you?--and make G. G. come to New York before he has to?"

"It will have to be pretty soon, I'm afraid," said G. G.'s mother.

"Sooner than run such risks with any boy of mine," said Cynthia, with a
high color, "I'd beg, I'd borrow, I'd forge, I'd lie--I'd steal!"

"Don't I know you would!" exclaimed G. G.'s mother. "My darling girl,
you've got the noblest character--it's just shining in your eyes!"

"There's another thing," said Cynthia: "I have to go down-town now on
business, but you must telephone me around five o'clock and tell me how
G. G.'s father is. And you must spend all your time between now and then
trying to think up something really useful that I can do to help you.
And"--here Cynthia became very mysterious--"I forbid you to worry about
money until I tell you to!"

Cynthia had a cousin in Wall Street; his name was Jarrocks Bell. He was
twenty years older than Cynthia and he had been fond of her ever since
she was born. He was a great, big, good-looking man, gruff without and
tender within. Clever people, who hadn't made successful brokers,
wondered how in the face of what they called his "obvious stupidity"
Jarrocks Bell had managed to grow rich in Wall Street. The answer was
obvious enough to any one who knew him intimately. To begin with, his
stupidity was superficial. In the second place, he had studied bonds and
stocks until he knew a great deal about them. Then, though a drinking
man, he had a head like iron and was never moved by exhilaration to
mention his own or anybody else's affairs. Furthermore, he was
unscrupulously honest. He was so honest and blunt that people thought
him brutal at times. Last and not least among the elements of his
success was the fact that he himself never speculated.

When the big men found out that there was in Wall Street a broker who
didn't speculate himself, who didn't drink to excess, who was absolutely
honest, and who never opened his mouth when it was better shut, they
began to patronize that man's firm. In short, the moment Jarrocks Bell's
qualities were discovered, Jarrocks Bell was made. So that now, in
speculative years, his profits were enormous.

Cynthia had always been fond of her big, blunt cousin, as he of her; and
in her present trouble her thoughts flew to him as straight as a homing
aeroplane to the landing-stage.

E