Young Wallingford

“Here,” said he to Blackie, “is the complete advertisement.”

Blackie picked up the proof sheet and glanced over it in evident approval. Taken altogether, it read:

LAUGH AT THAT WOOZY FEELINGDRINK GINGEREE!IT PUTS THE GINGER IN YOU TEN CENTS AT ALL SODA FOUNTAINS

“Within a week,” exulted Wallingford, “everybody in the middle states will know all about Gingeree. Before that time I’ll have Gingeree invented, and the Gingeree Company organized for half a million dollars. I’ll put in the plant and the advertising at one hundred and fifty thousand, sell about twenty-five thousand dollars of treasury stock to start the business, then sell my hundred and fifty thousand and get out.”

“You’ll have to go out of town to sell your stock,” observed Blackie.

“Out of town!” repeated Wallingford. “I should say not! With the good introduction I have here? Not any. I’ll sell stock to Doctor Lazzier and young Corbin and young Paley and the rest of the bunch.”

Blackie looked at his friend in gasping awe.

“Great guns!” he exploded. “J. Rufus, if you have nerve enough even to figure on that stunt, I believe you can pull it off!”

The door of the office opened and Mrs. Wallingford came in.

“Blackie Daw!” she exclaimed. “And so you are in town and mixed up in Jim’s affairs! Jim Wallingford, now I know you are not conducting a straight business!”

Blackie only grinned, but Mr. Wallingford was hurt.

“You’re mistaken, Fannie,” said he. “You sit right down there, and I’ll explain.”

He did so. When Wallingford rejoined her in their rooms that evening she had had time to think it all over. She had found no arguments to combat Wallingford’s statement of the case. She could not find words to overturn his words, and yet there was a flaw some place that she could not put her finger upon. Knowing this, then, and condoning it, was she not a part sharer in his guilt? Yes, and no. For a solid hour she searched her heart and she could find but one satisfactory answer. No matter what he had done in the past or might do in the future, she knew that she loved him, and whatever path his feet might tread, she knew that she would walk along with him. She had thought at first that she might guide his footsteps into better ways, but now she feared! She knew, too, that in remaining with him she must take him as he was.

And so, when he came to her, she was ready with her customary kiss, in which there was no lack of warmth; nor was there in her eyes any troubled look. He was delighted to find her in this mood.

“I guess you’ve thought it all over, Fannie,” said he, “and can see that at least this one business deal is a dead straight game, just as any good business man would play it.”

“Yes,” she reluctantly admitted. “I am afraid that business, even straight business, is sometimes conducted along such lines.”

But down in her heart of hearts she knew better.