“Here’s the receipts,” and from inside his vest Mr. Bates produced them. “Ground rent, light, heat, payroll, advertising, my own little old weekly envelope and everything; and I got one-eighty-one in my other kick for my share.”
“Very well,” said Bobby; “you just put this money of mine into a fund to buy further equipments when we need them.”
“Nit and nix; also no!” declared Mr. Bates emphatically. “This time the bet goes as she lays. You take a real money drag-down from now on.”
“Mr. Johnson,” called Bobby through the open door, “please take charge of this one hundred and eighty-one dollars, and open a separate account for my investment in the Bates Athletic Hall. It might be, Biff,” he continued, turning to Mr. Bates, “that yours would turn out to be the only safe business venture I ever made.”
“It ain’t no millionaire stunt, but it sure does pay a steady divvy,” Mr. Bates assured him. “I see a man outside scraping the real-estate sign off the door. Is he going to paint a new one?”
“I don’t know,” said Bobby, frowning. “I shall, of course, get into something very shortly, but I’ve not settled on anything as yet. The best thing that has turned up so far is an interest in the Brightlight Electric Company offered me to-day by Frank L. Sharpe.”
“What!” shrieked Biff in a high falsetto, and slapped himself smartly on the wrist. “Has he been here? I thought it seemed kind of close. Give me a cigarette till I fumigate.”
“What’s the matter with the Brightlight Electric Company?” demanded Bobby.
“Nothing. It’s a cinch so far as I know. But Sharpe! Why, say, Bobby, all the words I’d want to use to tell you about him have been left out of the dictionary so they could send it through the mails.”
Bobby frowned. The certain method to have him make allowances for a man was to attack that man. When he arrived at the Idlers’ Club at noon, however, he was given another opportunity for Christian charity. Nick Allstyne and Payne Winthrop and Stanley Rogers were discussing something with great indignation when he joined them, and Nick drew him over to the bulletin board, where was displayed the application of Frank L. Sharpe, proposed by Clarence Smythe, Silas Trimmer’s son-in-law, and seconded by another undesirable who had twice been posted for non-payment of dues.