"Arlingham—that big private hotel I showed you back there."
Percival confessed to his mother that night that he had wronged Uncle Peter.
"That old boy is all right yet," he said, with deep conviction. "Don't make any mistake there. He has bigger ideas than I gave him credit for. I suggested branching out here in a business way, to-day, and the old fellow got right in line. If anybody tells you that old Petie Bines hasn't got the leaves of his little calendar torn off right up to date you just feel wise inside, and see what odds are posted on it!"
CHAPTER XXXI.
Concerning Consolidated Copper and Peter Bines as Matchmakers
Consolidated copper at 110. The day after his talk with Uncle Peter, Percival through three different brokers gave orders to buy ten thousand shares.
"I tried to give Relpin an order for five thousand shares over the telephone," he said to Uncle Peter; "but they're used to those fifty and a hundred thousand dollar pikers down in that neighbourhood. He seemed to think I was joshing him. When I told him I meant it and was ready to take practically all he could buy for the next few weeks or so, I think he fell over in the booth and had to be helped out."
Orders for twenty thousand more shares in thousand share lots during the next three weeks sent the stock to 115. Yet wise men in the Street seemed to fear the stock. They were waiting cautiously for more definite leadings. The plunging of Bines made rather a sensation, and when it became known that his holdings were large and growing almost daily larger, the waning confidence of a speculator here and there would be revived.
At 115 the stock rested again, with few sales recorded. A certain few of the elect regarded this calm as ominous. It was half believed by others that the manipulations of the inner ring would presently advance the stock to a sensational figure, and that the reckless young man from Montana might be acting upon information of a definite character. But among the veteran speculators the feeling was conservative. Before buying they preferred to await some sign that the advance had actually begun. The conservatives were mostly the bald old fellows. Among the illusions that rarely survive a man's hair in Wall Street is the one that "sure things" are necessarily sure.