CHAPTER XXII
AGNES FINDS BOBBY A SLING AND BOBBY PUTS A STONE IN IT
The wonderful change in a girl who, through her love, has become all woman, that was the marvel to Bobby; the breadth of her knowledge, the depth of her sympathy, the boundlessness of her compassionate forgiveness, her quality of motherliness; and this last was perhaps the greatest marvel of all. Yet even his marveling did not encompass all the wonder. In his last exploit, more full of folly than anything into which he had yet blundered, and the one which, of all others, might most have turned her from him, Agnes had had the harder part; to sit at home and wait, to dread she knew not what. The certainty which finally evolved had less of distress in it than not to know while day by day passed by. One thing had made it easier: never for one moment had she lost faith in Bobby, in any way. She was certain, however, that financially his trip would be a losing one, and from the time he left she kept her mind almost constantly upon the thought of his future. She had become almost desperately anxious for him to fulfill the hopes of his father, and day by day she studied the commercial field as she had never thought it possible that she could do. There was no line of industry upon which she did not ponder, and there was scarcely any morning that she did not at the breakfast table ask Dan Elliston the ins and outs of some business. If he was not able to tell her all she wanted to know, she usually commissioned him to find out. He took these requests in good part, and if she accomplished nothing else by all her inquiries she acquired such a commercial education as falls to the lot of but few home-kept young women.
One morning her uncle came down a trifle late for breakfast and was in a hurry.
“The Elliston School of Commercial Instruction will have a recess for this session,” he observed as he popped into his chair. “I have an important engagement at the factory this morning and have about seven minutes for breakfast. During that seven minutes I prefer to eat rather than to talk. However, I do not object to listening. This being my last word except to request you to gather things closely about my plate, you may now start.”
“Very well,” said she, dimpling as she usually did at any evidence of briskness on the part of her Uncle Dan, for from long experience she knew the harmlessness of his bark. “Nick Allstyne happened to remark to me last night that the Bulletin is for sale. What do you think of the newspaper business for Bobby?”
“The time necessary to answer that question takes my orange from me,” objected Uncle Dan as he hastily sipped another bite of the fruit and pushed it away. “The newspaper business for Bobby!” He drew the muffins toward him and took one upon his plate, then he stopped and pondered a moment. “Do you know,” said he, “that’s about the best suggestion you’ve made. I believe he could make a hummer out of a newspaper. I’ve noticed this about the boy’s failures; they have all of them been due to lack of experience; none of them has been due to any absence of backbone. Nobody has ever bluffed him.”
Agnes softly clapped her hands.
“Exactly!” she cried. “Well, Uncle Dan, this is the last word I’m going to say. For the balance of your seven minutes I’m going to help stuff you with enough food to keep you until luncheon time; but sometime to-day, if you find time, I want you to go over and see the proprietor of the Bulletin and find out how much he wants for his property, and investigate it as a business proposition just the same as if you were going into it yourself.”
Uncle Dan, dipping voraciously into his soft boiled eggs, grinned and said: “Huh!” Then he looked at his watch. When he came home to dinner, however, he hunted up Agnes at once.