arrocks, looking rather stupid and bored, conducted Cynthia through
his outer offices and put her into an elevator "going down." Her face
vanished and his heart continued to mumble and grumble, just the way a
tooth does when it is getting ready to ache.

Cynthia had entered Wall Street at an auspicious moment. Stocks were at
that high level from which they presently tumbled to the panic
quotations of nineteen-seven. And Jarrocks, whom the unsuccessful
thought so very stupid, had made a very shrewd guess as to what was
going to happen.

Two weeks later he wrote Cynthia that if she could use two or three
thousand dollars she could have them, without troubling her balance very
perceptibly.

"I thought you had a chance," he wrote. "I'm beginning to think it's a
sure thing! Keep a stiff upper lip and first thing you know you'll have
the laugh on mamma and papa. Give 'em my best regards."

VI

If it is wicked to gamble Cynthia was wicked. If it is wicked to lie
Cynthia was wicked. If the money that comes out of Wall Street belonged
originally to widows and orphans, why, that is the kind of money which
she amassed for her own selfish purposes. Worst of all, on learning from
Jarrocks that the Rainbow's Foot--where the pot of gold is--was almost
in sight, this bad, wicked girl's sensations were those of unmixed
triumph and delight!

The panic of nineteen-seven is history now. Plenty of people who lost
their money during those exciting months can explain to you how any
fool, with the least luck, could have made buckets of it instead.

As a snowball rolling down a hill of damp snow swells to gigantic
proportions, so Cynthia's five hundred dollars descended the long slopes
of nineteen-seven, doubling itself at almost every turn. And when, at
last, values had so shrunk that it looked to Jarrocks as if they could
not shrink any more, he told her that her account--which stood in the
name of G. G.'s mother--was worth nearly four hundred thousand dollars.
"And I think," he said, "that, if you now buy stocks outright and hold
them as investments, your money will double again."

So they put their heads together and Cynthia bought some Union Pacific
at par and some Steel Common in the careless twenties, and other
standard securities that were begging, almost with tears in their eyes,
to be bought and cared for by somebody. She had the certificates of what
she bought made out in the name of G. G.'s mother. And she went up-town
a