ncern in which they ought to have more than
a paltry two shares each of stock. Each gentleman, exercising his
rights as a stock-holder, had insisted on poring carefully over the
constitution and by-laws, the charter, the "bonds," and all the other
forms and papers. Each, again in his capacity of stock-holder, had
kept careful track of the progress of the business, of the agents that
were presently put out, and of the long list of names rapidly piling
up in the card-index; and each made hints to J. Rufus about the
purchase of additional stock, becoming regretful, however, when they
found that the shares were held strictly at par.

In this triumphant period Wallingford was aggravatingly jovial, even
exasperating, in the crowing tone he took.

"How are we getting along? Fine!" he declared to each stock-holder in
turn. "Inside of six months we'll have a membership of ten thousand!"
And they were forced to believe him.

Probably none of the ex-members of the defunct loan association was so
annoyed over the condition of affairs as Ebenezer Squinch, nor so
nervously interested.

"I thought you intended to begin collecting your weekly payments when
you had two hundred and fifty members," he protested to Wallingford,
"but you have close to five hundred now."

"That's just the point," explained Wallingford. "I'm doing so much
better than I thought that I don't intend to start the collections
until I have a full thousand, which will let me have four thousand in
the very first loan fund, making two hundred and fifty a week to the
expense fund and a hundred a week for the loan committee, besides one
thousand dollars toward the grand annual distribution. That will give
me twenty-six hundred to be divided in one loan of a thousand, one of
five hundred, one of two hundred and fifty, two of a hundred, four of
fifty, ten of twenty-five, and twenty of ten dollars each; a grand
distribution of thirty-nine loans in all. That keeps it from being
a piker bet; and think what the first distribution and every
distribution will do toward getting future membership! And they'll
grow larger every month. I don't think it'll take me all that six
months to get my ten thousand members."

Mr. Squinch, over his tightly pressed finger-tips, did a little rapid
figuring. A membership of ten thousand would make a total income for
the office, counting expense fund and loan committee fund, of three
thousand five hundred per week, steadily, week in and we