n, who strolled into the parlor in
his dressing-jacket and with a cigar tilted in the corner of his
mouth.

"How's the Commercial Board of Strategy coming on?" he inquired as he
offered Bobby a cigar.

"Fine!" declared Bobby; "except that it can not think of a stratagem."

"I think you are very selfish not to help us out, Uncle Dan," declared
Agnes. "With all your experience you ought to be able to suggest
something for Bobby to go into that would be a nice business and
perfectly safe and make him lots of money without requiring too much
experience to start with."

"Young lady," said Uncle Dan severely, "if I knew a business of that
kind I'd sell some of the stock of my factory and go into it myself;
but I don't. The fact is, there are no business snaps lying around
loose. You have to make one, and that takes not just money, but work
and brains."

"I'm perfectly willing to work," declared Bobby.

"And you don't mean to say that he hasn't brains!" objected Agnes.

"No-o-o," admitted Uncle Dan. "I am quite sure that Bobby has brains,
but they have not been quite--a--a--well, say solidified, yet. You're
not allowed to smoke in this parlor, Bobby. Mrs. Elliston wants a
quiet home game of whist; sent me to bring you up."

Secretly, old Dan Elliston was himself puzzling a great deal over a
career for Bobby, but up to the moment had not found anything that he
thought safe to propose. Not having a good idea he was averse to
discussing any project whatsoever, and so, each time that he was
consulted upon the subject, he was as evasive as this about it, and
Bobby each morning dragged perplexedly into the handsome offices of
the defunct Applerod Addition, where Applerod and Johnson were still
working a solid eight hours a day to straighten out the affairs of
that unfortunate venture.

Those offices were the dullest quarters Bobby knew, for they contained
nothing but the dead ashes of bygone money; but one morning business
picked up with a jerk. He found a mine investment agent awaiting him
when he arrived, and before he was through with this clever
conversationalist a man was in to get him to buy a racing stable.
Affairs grew still more brisk as the morning wore on. Within the next
two hours he had politely but firmly declined to buy a partnership in
a string of bucket shops, to refinance a defunct irrigation company,
to invest in a Florida plantation, to take a tip on copper, and to
back an automobile factory which was