“Your Bulletin proposition looks pretty good,” he told her. “I saw Greenleaf. He’s a physical wreck and has been for two years. He has to get away or die. Moreover, his physical condition has reacted upon his paper. His circulation has run down, but he has a magnificent plant and a good office organization. He wants two hundred thousand dollars for his plant, good will and franchises. I’m going to investigate this a little further. Do you suppose Bobby will have two hundred thousand left when he gets through with grand opera?”
“I hope so,” replied Agnes; “but if he hasn’t I’ll have him waste the balance of this two hundred and fifty thousand so that he can draw the next one.”
Uncle Dan laughed in huge enjoyment of this solution.
“You surely were cut out for high finance,” he told her.
She smiled, and was silent a while, hesitating.
“You seem to think pretty well of the business as a business proposition,” she ventured anxiously, by and by; “but you haven’t told me what you think of it as applicable to Bobby.”
“If he’ll take you in the office with him, he’ll do all right,” he answered her banteringly; but when he went up-stairs and found his wife he said: “Constance, if that girl don’t pull Bobby Burnit through his puppyhood in good shape there is something wrong with the scheme of creation. There is something about you women of the Elliston family that every once in a while makes me pause and reverence the Almighty,” whereupon Aunt Constance flushed prettily, as became her.
With the same earnestness of purpose Agnes handled the question of Bobby’s breach-of-promise suit in so far as it affected his social reception. The Ellistons went to the theater and sat in a box to exhibit him on the second night after his return, and Agnes took careful count of all the people she knew who attended the theater that night. The next day she went to see all of them, among others Mrs. Horace Wickersham, whose social word was social law.
“My dear,” said the redoubtable Mrs. Wickersham, “it does Bobby Burnit great credit that he did not marry the creature. Of course I shall invite him to our affair next Friday night.”
After that there could be no further question of Bobby’s standing, though without the firm support of Agnes he might possibly have been ostracised, for a time at least.