"Playing it short?"
"Haven't yet made up my mind. What do you think?" he said, to draw the other on.
"Think?" said the other with the enthusiasm of the gambler's conviction. "Lord, there's only one thing to think. This market's touched bottom two weeks ago. When it starts to rise watch things go kiting."
"You think so?" said Bojo, with the instinctive tendency to seek hope in the slightest straws that is the strangest part of all the strange acquaintanceships of the moment which speculation engenders. He had to listen for five minutes to impassioned oratory, to hearing all the reasons recounted why the long depression was nothing but psychological and an upward turn a certainty. He slipped away presently, rather relieved at this confidence from a shallow prophet, and when he met Patsie by appointment, the news he brought her dispelled the feelings of foreboding under which she had been suffering the last week.
"After all, perhaps we have been rather panicky," he said, with a new assumption of cheerfulness. "Remember one thing, your father knows this game and when he says that the big group does not intend to have a panic, because they themselves have too much to lose, Patsie, he must know what he is talking about."
"If Doris were only here," she said, her woman's instinct unconvinced.
"You sent the telegram?"
"Last night. I should have had the answer this morning. That's what worries me. Perhaps it won't reach them in time and even if it does it will be over two days before they can get back."
"It would help a good deal," he admitted. The prospect of going to Doris for help after what had happened was one from which he shrank, yet he was resolved to stop at nothing, willing to sacrifice his pride if only to secure the aid which, knowing their connections, he knew Boskirk could bring the imperilled financier.
"At least I shall do what I can do," she said, with a determined shake of her head.