ven a respectable broker's office is a noisome, embarrassing place, and
among the clients are men whose eyes have become popped from staring at
paper-tapes and pretty girls; but Cynthia had no more fear of men than a
farmer's daughter has of cows, and she flashed through Jarrocks's outer
office--preceded by a very small boy--with her color unchanged and only
her head a little higher than usual.

Jarrocks must have wondered to the point of vulgar curiosity what the
deuce had brought Cynthia to see him in the busiest hour of a very busy
day; but he said "Hello, Cynthia!" as naturally as if they two had been
visiting in the same house and he had come face to face with her for the
third or fourth time that morning.

"I suppose," said Cynthia, "that you are dreadfully busy; but, Jarrocks
dear, my affairs are so much more important to me than yours can
possibly be to you--do you mind?"

"May I smoke?"

"Of course."

"Then I don't mind. What's your affair, Cynthia--money or the heart?"

"Both, Jarrocks." And she told him pretty much what the reader has
already learned. As for Jarrocks's listening, he was a perfect study of
himself. He laughed gruffly when he ought to have cried; and when
Cynthia tried to be a little humorous he looked very solemn and not
unlike the big bronze Buddha of the Japanese. Inside, however, his big
heart was full of compassion and tenderness for his favorite girl in all
the world. Nobody will ever know just how fond Jarrocks was of Cynthia.
It was one of those matters on which--owing, perhaps, to his being her
senior by twenty years--he had always thought it best to keep his mouth
shut.

"What's your plan?" he asked. "Where do I come in? I'll give you
anything I've got." Cynthia waived the offer; it was a little unwelcome.

"I've got about five hundred dollars," she said, "and I want to
speculate with it and make a lot of money, so that I can be independent
of papa and mamma."

"Lots of people," said Jarrocks, "come to Wall Street with five hundred
dollars, more or less, and they wish to be independent of papa and
mamma. They end up by going to live in the Mills Hotel."

"I know," said Cynthia; "but this is really important. If G. G. could
work it would be different."

"Tell me one thing," said Jarrocks: "If you weren't in love with G. G.
what would you think of him as a candidate for your very best friend's
hand?"

Cynthia counted ten before answering.

"Jarrocks, dear," she said--an