in their
dollar and a quarter a week; eleven hundred and fifty a week for us to
handle, and the amount growing every month."

"That's a pretty good start," commented J. Rufus, considering the
matter carefully as he eyed the stream of ascending bubbles in his
hollow-stemmed glass. "No matter what business you're in, if you have
a package of clean, new, fresh dollars every week to handle, some of
it is bound to settle to the bottom; but there mustn't be too many to
swallow the settlings."

"Six of us on the inside," mused the other. "Doc Turner, who sells
real estate only to people who can't pay for it; Ebenezer Squinch, a
lawyer that makes a specialty of widows and orphans and damage claims;
Tom Fester, who runs the nicest little chattel-mortgage company that
ever collected a life income from a five-dollar bill; Andy Grout, who
has been conducting a prosperous instalment business for ten years on
the same old stock of furniture; and Jim Christmas, who came in from
the farm ten years ago to become a barber, shaving nothing but notes."

Young Wallingford sat lost in admiration.

"What a lovely bunch of citizens to train a growing young dollar; to
teach it to jump through hoops and lay down and roll over," he
declared. "And I suppose you were in a similar line, Judge?" he
ventured.

"Nothing like it," denied the judge emphatically. "I was in a decent,
respectable loan business. Collateral loans were my specialty."

"I see," said J. Rufus, chuckling. "All mankind were not your
brothers, exactly, but your brothers' children."

"Making me the universal uncle, yes," admitted Mr. Fox, then he
suddenly puffed up with pride in his achievements. "And I do say," he
boasted, "that I could give any Jew cards and spades at the game and
still beat him out on points. I reckon I invented big casino, little
casino and the four aces in the pawn brokerage business. Let alone my
gage of the least a man would take, I had it fixed so that they could
slip into my place by the front door, from the drug-store on one side,
from the junk-yard on the other, from the saloon across the alley in
the rear, and down-stairs, from the hall leading to Doc Turner's
office."

Lost in twinkling-eyed admiration of his own cleverness he lapsed into
silence, but J. Rufus, eager for information, aroused him.

"But why did you blow the easy little new company?" he wanted to know.
"I could understand it if you had been running a local building-loan
compa