is Goliath, full panoplied, sneering, waiting;
but alas! Bobby had neither sling nor stone. It was all very well to
announce in fine frenzy that he would smash the Consolidated, destroy
the political ring, drive Sam Stone and his henchmen out of town and
wrest all his goods and gear from Silas Trimmer; but until he could
find a place to plant his foot, descry an opening in the armor and
procure an adequate weapon, he might just as well bottle his fuming
and wait; so Bobby waited. In the meantime he stuck very closely to
the Brightlight office, finding there, in the practice of petty
economics and the struggle with well-nigh impossible conditions, ample
food for thought. In a separate bank reposed the new fund of two
hundred and fifty thousand dollars, which he kept religiously aside
from the affairs of the Brightlight, and this fund also waited; for
Bobby was not nearly so feverish to find instant employment for it as
he had been with the previous ones--though he had endless chances.
People with the most unheard of schemes seemed to have a peculiar
scent for unsophisticated money, and not only local experts in the
gentle art of separation flocked after him, but out of town
specialists came to him in shoals. To these latter he took great
satisfaction in displaying the gem of his collection of post-mortem
letters from old John Burnit:

"You don't need to go away from home to be skinned; moreover,
it isn't patriotic."

That usually stopped them. He was growing quite sophisticated, was
Bobby, quite able to discern the claws beneath the velvet paw, quite
suspicious of all the ingenious gentlemen who wanted to make a fortune
for him; and their frantic attempts to "get his goat," as Biff Bates
expressed it, had become as good as a play to this wise young person,
as also to the wise young person's trustee.

Agnes, who was helping Bobby wait, came occasionally to the office of
the Brightlight on business, and nearly always Bobby had reduced to
paper some gaudy new scheme that had been proposed to him, over which
they both might laugh. In great hilarity one morning they were going
over the prospectus of a plan to reclaim certain swamp lands in
Florida, when the telephone bell rang, and from Bobby's difficulty in
understanding and his smile as he hung up the receiver, Agnes knew
that something else amusing had turned up.

[Illustration: Little me to trot out and find an angel. Are you it?]

"It is from Schmirdonner,"