"Many a slick crook has taken advantage of just that kind of feeling,"
mused Mr. Tutt. "There are two things that women--particularly trained
nurses--seem to like better than anything else in the world--babies and
stock certificates."

Then upon the arrival of the recalcitrant William he gathered up his
papers and took down his hat from the tree.

"I wish you'd let me get your hat ironed, Mr. Tutt," remarked Miss
Wiggin. "It would cost you only fifty cents."

"That's all you know about it, my dear," he answered. "More likely it
would cost me a hundred thousand dollars."

* * * * *

Mr. Tobias Greenbaum, of Scherer, Hunn, Greenbaum & Beck, carefully
placed his cigar where it would not char his Italian Renaissance desk
and smoothed out the list which Mr. Elderberry, the secretary of The
Horse's Neck Extension Copper Mining Company, handed to him. The list
was typed on thin sheets; of foolscap and contained the names of
stockholders, but as it had lain rolled up in the bottom of Mr.
Elderberry's desk for five years without being disturbed it was inclined
to resist the gentle pressure of Mr. Greenbaum's fingers.

Mr. Greenbaum glanced sharply round the plate-glass lake that separated
him from the other directors of Horse's Neck, rather as if he had
detected his associates in a crime.

"Isaacs says," he announced in an arrogant, almost insulting tone,
though below the surface he was an entirely genial person, "that the new
vein in the Amphalula runs into the west drift of Horse's Neck almost to
where we quit work in Number Nine five years ago."

"If it does it will make it a bonanza property," emphatically declared
his partner, Mr. Scherer, a dolichocephalous person with very black hair
and thin bluish cheeks. "It's a pity we didn't buy it all in at ten
cents a share."

"We did!" retorted Greenbaum. "All that could be shaken out. We've got
all the stock that hasn't gravitated to the cemeteries."

"Even if the Amphalula vein doesn't run into it it will come near
enough to make Horse's Neck worth dollars per share. It's a
heads-I-win-tails-you-lose proposition," commented Mr. Hunn dryly. "Who
controls Amphalula?"

"We do," snapped Greenbaum.

"Then it's a cinch," returned Hunn mildly. "Shake out the sleepers,
reorganize, and sell or hold as seems most advisable later on."

Mr. Elderberry cleared his throat tentatively.

"If you gentlemen will pardon me--I have been considering t