ing this summer if I have to.
I'll be a runner, the man who sweeps out the office, anything that will
give me a chance to watch and study Wall Street. I'm sorry if you don't
approve, sir."

"I didn't say that," Bailly answered, "but the fact was sufficiently
clear."

Yet George knew perfectly well a few days later that it was Bailly who
had spoken about his ambition to Mr. Alston.

"Blodgett, I fancy," Mr. Alston said, "will offer you some small start."

He handed George a letter addressed to one Josiah Blodgett, of the firm
of Blodgett and Sinclair.

"Good luck, and good-bye until next fall."

"If you do change your mind----If you can manage it----" Betty said.

So George, two or three days before commencement, left Princeton for
Wall Street, and presented his letter.

The offices of Blodgett and Sinclair were gorgeous and extensive, raw
with marble, and shining with mahogany. They suggested a hotel in bad
taste rather than a factory that turned out money in spectacular
quantities.

"Mr. Blodgett will see you," a young man announced in an awed voice, as
if such condescension were infrequent.

In the remote room where Blodgett lurked the scheme of furnishing
appeared to culminate. The man himself shared its ornamental grossness.
He glanced up, his bald head puckering half its height. George saw that
although he was scarcely middle-aged Blodgett was altogether too fat,
with puffy, unhealthily coloured cheeks. In such a face the tiny eyes
had an appearance nearly porcine. The man's clothing would have put an
habitue of the betting ring at ease--gray-and-white checks,
dove-coloured spats, a scarlet necktie. Pudgy fingers twisted Mr.
Alston's letter. The little eyes opened wider. The frown relaxed. A bass
voice issued from the broad mouth:

"If you've come here to learn, you can't expect a million dollars a
week. Say fifteen to start."

George didn't realize how extraordinarily generous that was. He only
decided he could scrape along on it.

"Mr. Alston," the deep voice went on, "tells me you're a great football
player. That's a handicap. All you can tackle here is trouble, and the
only kicking we have is when Mundy boots somebody out of a job. He's my
office manager. Report to him. Wait a minute. I'd give a ping-pong
player a job if Mr. Alston asked me to. He's a fine man. But then I'm
through. It's up to the man and Mundy. If the man's no good Mundy
doesn't even bother to tell me, and it's twenty stories