“I don’t see the difference,” she protested. “I’m sure I thought it was to be straight twenty-five per cent., and I’m sure all the members of the company thought so.”

He patiently explained it to her.

“Don’t you see, if I sell one hundred thousand dollars’ worth of stock, I get the same as twenty-five thousand dollars for it, and with that buy fifty thousand dollars’ worth of stock? Of course I get it at the same price as others—fifty per cent.”

“Did they understand you’d get fifty thousand instead of twenty-five thousand?” she asked.

He chuckled again.

“If they didn’t they will,” he admitted.

She pondered over that thoughtfully for a while.

“Is that straight business?” she inquired.

“Of course it’s straight business or I wouldn’t be doing it. It is perfectly legitimate. You just don’t understand.”