She flung herself joyfully into his arms at this victory won, at this prospect opened.
"Bojo, I do love you and I do want to do so much for you!" she cried, tightening her arms about his neck, with more genuine demonstration than she had shown in months.
"After all, I'd be a fool to refuse," he thought, excited too, and aloud he said, "Yes, Miss General Manager."
"Oh, call me anything you like if you'll only let me manage you!" she said, laughing. "Now sit down and let me tell you all I've planned out for you to do."
That night she told him excitedly over the telephone that her little scheme had succeeded, that her father had given his O. K., but of course no one must know. The next day he had bought five hundred shares for her, and after much hesitation a thousand for his own account at 104½. It was a good risk; the stock had been stable for years; even if the combination did not go through, there was little danger of a rapid fall; and if it went up there was a chance at a thirty- or forty-point rise. He kept the injunction of secrecy, as all such injunctions are kept, to the point of telling only his closest friends, Marsh and DeLancy, who bought at once.
Nevertheless, no sooner had the transaction been completed than he had a sudden revulsion. He had been long enough in Wall Street to have heard a hundred tales of the methods of big manipulators. What if Dan Drake's endorsement was only a clever ruse to conceal his real intentions, quits for reimbursing Doris afterward with a check, according to a famous precedent? Perhaps he even suspected that he, Bojo, had put Doris up to it and was taking this method to read him the lesson that his methods were not to be solved along such lines. At any rate, Tom passed a very bad night, saying to himself that he had plunged ahead on the flimsiest sort of evidence and fully deserved a shearing.
A glorious December morning, with a touch of Indian summer, was pouring through the half-opened window, bearing the distant sounds of steam riveters. Marsh was busily culling half a dozen newspapers, while Fred was yawning over the eggs and coffee, when the mail was brought in by the grinning Oriental who had been dubbed Sweeney. DeLancy, who had the curiosity of a girl, pounced upon the letters, slinging half a dozen at Bojo with a grumbled comment.
"Dog ding him if he isn't more popular than me! Important business letters—Mr. Morgan and Mr. Rockefeller asking your advice—society invitations—do honor our humble palace, pink envelope, heavily scented. I say, Bojo, I've gone in deep on your precious stock, two hundred shares—all I could scrape together. Hope you guess right. Anything I hate is work, and 10 per cent. margin ought to be bolstered up by divine revelation."
"Wish the deuce you hadn't," said Bojo, sitting down and opening the formal announcement of his broker's purchase, which struck his eyes like a criminal warrant.
"Cheer up," said Marsh, emerging from the litter of papers. "I've got a tip from another angle, one of the lawyers involved. I'm going in for another couple of thousand shares. Why so glum, Bojo?"