spitality. He hesitated, but the fragrance in the
air was maddening--besides there was always the chance of a friend in
funds. He fingered the coin regretfully and laid it on the counter with
a heavy heart. He might argue with Bill and plead with Al, but Laloo had
the soul of a pawnbroker.

"There's the bank roll, pick out the fat ones!"

Five minutes later, with his nose buried in a fragrant sandwich, elbows
on the counter, he returned to The Great Idea. Suddenly the sublimity of
the conception smote him. Think of lolling languidly under the surface
and regulating the temperature at will with only the exposure of a foot!
Think of the gain to humanity in the added daily comfort! The idea was
stupendous, colossal! It beat even Dink Stover's famous Sleep Prolonger,
the Alarm Clock, which automatically closed the window and opened the
hot air register at the designated hour. And out of the world, out of
the whole human race, present and past, he, John C. Bedelle, was the
first to stumble upon this revolutionary fact! An accident? Perhaps--but
so was Galileo's discovery of the telescope an accident. When the
gnawing appetite had been placated (somewhat placated, but not
convinced), the Skippy Bedelle who descended Laloo's steps, with grave
and thoughtful face, had emerged from the warm skin of the urchin, with
the consciousness of manhood's call to service.

CHAPTER III

MACNOODER OPENS VISTAS

TO Skippy's credit be it recorded that the first impulse was
humanitarian. For the second was distinctly mercenary. But then Skippy
lived in a materialistic age and Skippy's father owned a department
store. Yet the practical and profitable possibilities did not proceed
from any inward contamination of the generous impulse of invention, but
from contact and suggestion. At Bill Appleby's, where he wandered in
hungrily, in a desperate hope of meeting some friend whose memory could
be jogged by reference to past favors, he perceived the celebrated Doc
Macnooder in earnest conclave with Appleby, to whom he was offering to
sell the Lawrenceville rights of his latest invention, the Folding
Toothbrush. Given Bill Appleby's natural canniness, and Macnooder's
hypnotic eloquence, the discussion was apt to be long and difficult, so
Skippy hovered at a respectable distance with ears at attention.

At this time, due to a rift in the lute (a little matter of expert
accounting on a joint operation), the firm of Macnooder and the
Tenne