but his
father would make an exception in his case.

He hurried back, whistling; and his father glanced up smiling when he
came in.

"Well, Frank, how'd you make out?" he asked.

"Here's a note at thirty days," he said, producing the paper Dalrymple
had given him. "Do you want to discount that for me? You can take your
thirty-two out of that."

His father examined it closely. "Sixty-two dollars!" he observed. "Mr.
Dalrymple! That's good paper! Yes, I can. It will cost you ten per
cent.," he added, jestingly. "Why don't you just hold it, though? I'll
let you have the thirty-two dollars until the end of the month."

"Oh, no," said his son, "you discount it and take your money. I may want
mine."

His father smiled at his business-like air. "All right," he said. "I'll
fix it to-morrow. Tell me just how you did this." And his son told him.

At seven o'clock that evening Frank's mother heard about it, and in due
time Uncle Seneca.

"What'd I tell you, Cowperwood?" he asked. "He has stuff in him, that
youngster. Look out for him."

Mrs. Cowperwood looked at her boy curiously at dinner. Was this the
son she had nursed at her bosom not so very long before? Surely he was
developing rapidly.

"Well, Frank, I hope you can do that often," she said.

"I hope so, too, ma," was his rather noncommittal reply.

Auction sales were not to be discovered every day, however, and his home
grocer was only open to one such transaction in a reasonable period of
time, but from the very first young Cowperwood knew how to make money.
He took subscriptions for a boys' paper; handled the agency for the sale
of a new kind of ice-skate, and once organized a band of neighborhood
youths into a union for the purpose of purchasing their summer straw
hats at wholesale. It was not his idea that he could get rich by saving.
From the first he had the notion that liberal spending was better, and
that somehow he would get along.

It was in this year, or a little earlier, that he began to take an
interest in girls. He had from the first a keen eye for the beautiful
among them; and, being good-looking and magnetic himself, it was not
difficult for him to attract the sympathetic interest of those in whom
he was interested. A twelve-year old girl, Patience Barlow, who lived
further up the street, was the first to attract his attention or be
attracted by him. Black hair and snapping black eyes were her portion,
with pretty pigtails down her back, and