supposed he could sell his Liberty Bond as
Melville was planning to do and use that money instead of the sum he had
laid by. But he did not just know how to go to work to convert a Liberty
Bond into cash. It was an easy enough matter to buy a bond; but where
did you go to sell one? How many business questions there were that a
boy of seventeen was unable to answer! If he were to ask his father how
to sell the bond, it might arouse suspicion, to ask anybody else might
do so too. People would wonder why he, Paul Cameron, was selling a
Liberty Bond he had bought only a short time before. Burmingham was a
gossipy little town. Its good news traveled fast but so also did its bad
news. Any item of interest, no matter how small, was rapidly spread from
one end of the village to the other. Therefore Paul could not risk even
making inquiries, let alone selling his property to any one in the
place.

Yet he could not but laugh at the irony of the signs that confronted him
wherever he went: _Buy Bonds!_ _Invest!_ There were selling booths at
the bank, the library, the town hall. At every street corner you came
upon them. But none of these agencies were purchasing bonds themselves.
Nowhere did it say: _Sell Bonds!_ These patriots were not at their posts
to add to their troubles--not they!

Once it occurred to Paul to ask the cashier at the bank what people did
with Liberty Bonds which they wanted to dispose of; but on second
thought he realized that Mr. Stacy was an intimate friend of his
father's and might mention the incident. Therefore he at length
dismissed the possibility of selling his bond and thereby meeting his
share of the _March Hare_ deficit.

No, he must use his typewriter money. There was no escape. He chanced to
be at the _Echo_ offices that day with copy for the next issue of his
paper and was still rebelliously wavering over the loss of his
typewriter when the door of Mr. Carter's private room opened and the
great man himself appeared, ushering out a visitor. Glancing about on
his return from the elevator his eye fell on Paul.

"Ah, Paul, good afternoon," he nodded. "Come into my office a moment. I
want to speak to you."

Paul followed timidly. It was seldom that his business brought him into
personal touch with Mr. Carter, toward whom he still maintained no small
degree of awe; usually the affairs relative to the school paper were
transacted either through the business manager of the _Echo_ or with one
of his