At the theater that evening, Bobby, to his vexation, found Agnes Elliston walking in the promenade foyer with the well-set-up stranger. He passed her with a nod and slipped moodily into the rear of the Elliston box, where Aunt Constance, perennially young, was entertaining Nick Allstyne and Jack Starlett, and keeping them at a keen wit’s edge, too. Bobby gave them the most perfunctory of greetings, and, sitting back by himself, sullenly moped. He grumbled to himself that he had a headache; the play was a humdrum affair; Trimmer was a bore; the proposed consolidation had suddenly lost its prismatic coloring; the Traders’ Club was crude; Starlett and Allstyne were utterly frivolous. All this because Agnes was out in the foyer with a very likely-looking young man.
She did not return until the end of that act, and found Bobby ready to go, pleading early morning business.
“Who’s the chap with the silky mustache?” he suddenly demanded, unable to forbear any longer. “He’s a new one.”
The eyes of Agnes gleamed mischievously.
“Bobby, I’m astonished at your manners,” she chided him. “Now tell me what you’ve been doing with yourself.”
“Trying to grow up into John Burnit’s truly son,” he told her with some trace of pompous pride, being ready in advance to accept his rebuke meekly, as he always had to do, and being quite ready to cover up his grievous error with a change of topic. “I had no idea that business could so grip a fellow. But what I’d like to find out just now is who is my trustee? It must have been somebody with horse sense, or the governor would not have appointed whoever it was. I’m not going to ask anything I’m forbidden to know, but I want some advice. Now, how shall I learn who it is?”
“Well,” replied Agnes thoughtfully, “about the only plan I can suggest is that you ask your father’s legal and business advisers.”
He positively beamed down at her.
“You’re the dandy girl, all right,” he said admiringly. “Now, if you would only——”