They were uncomfortably silent when Bobby had returned from the little room adjoining. The shadow of tragedy lay upon them all, and it was out of this shadow that Bobby spoke his determination.
“I am going to get out of business,” he declared. “It is a hard, hard game. I can win at it, but—well, I’d rather go back, if I only could, to my unsophistication of four years ago. I don’t like business. Of course, I’ll keep this place for tradition’s sake, and because it would please my father—no, I mean it will please him—but I’m going to sell the Bulletin. I have an offer for it at an excellent profit. I’m going to intrust the management of the electric plant to my good friend Biff, here, with Chalmers and Johnson as starboard and larboard bulwarks, until the stock is quoted at a high enough rating to be a profitable sale; then I’m going to turn it into money, and add it to the original fund. I think I shall be busy enough just looking after and enjoying my new partnership,” and he smiled down at Agnes, who smiled back at him with a trusting admiration that needed no words to express.
“Beg your pardon, sir,” said old Johnson, “but I have a letter here for you,” and from his inside pocket he drew one of the familiar steel-gray envelopes, which he handed to Bobby.
It was addressed:
To My Son Bobby, Upon His Regaining His Father’s Business
The message inside was so brief that one who had not known well old John Burnit would never have known the full, full heart out of which he penned it:
“I knew you’d do it, dear boy. Whatever mystery I find in the great hereafter I shall be satisfied—for I knew you’d do it.”
That was all.
“Johnson,” said Bobby, crumpling up the letter in his hand, and speaking briskly to beat back his emotion, “we will move our offices to the same old quarters, and we will move back, for my use, my father’s old desk with my father’s portrait hanging above it, just as they were when Silas Trimmer ordered them removed.”
Two of the stock-holders came in at this moment, and Agnes went down into the store to find Biff Bates and Nellie Platt, for there was much shopping to do. Agnes had taken pretty Nellie under her chaperonage, and every day now the girls were busy with preparations for certain events in which each was highly interested.