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“Tell me one thing,” said Jarrocks: “If you weren’t in love with G. G. what would you think of him as a candidate for your very best friend’s hand?”

Cynthia counted ten before answering.

“Jarrocks, dear,” she said–and he turned away from the meltingness of her lovely face–“he’s so pure, he’s so straight, he’s so gentle and so brave, that I don’t really think I can tell you what I think of him.”

There was silence for a moment, then Jarrocks said gruffly:

“That’s a clean-enough bill of health. Guess you can bring him into the family, Cynthia.”

Then he drummed with his thick, stubby fingers on the arm of his chair.

“The idea,” he said at last, “is to turn five hundred dollars into a fortune. You know I don’t speculate.”

“But you make it easy for other people?”

He nodded.

“If you’d come a year ago,” he said, “I’d have sent you away. Just at the present moment your proposition isn’t the darn-fool thing it sounds.”

“I knew you’d agree with me,” said Cynthia complacently. “I knew you’d put me into something that was going ‘way up.”

Jarrocks snorted.

“Prices are at about the highest level they’ve ever struck and money was never more expensive. I think we’re going to see such a tumble in values as was never seen before. It almost tempts me to come out of my shell and take a flyer–if I lose your five hundred for you, you won’t squeal, Cynthia?”

“Of course not.”

“Then I’ll tell you what I think. There’s nothing certain in this business, but if ever there was a chance to turn five hundred dollars into big money it’s now. You’ve entered Wall Street, Cynthia, at what looks to me like the psychological moment.”

“That’s a good omen,” said Cynthia. “I believe we shall succeed. And I leave everything to you.”

Then she wrote him a check for all the money she had in the world. He held it between his thumb and forefinger while the ink dried.

“By the way, Cynthia,” he said, “do you want the account to stand in your own name?”

She thought a moment, then laughed and told him to put it in the name of G. G.’s mother. “But you must report to me how things go,” she said.

Jarrocks called a clerk and gave him an order to sell something or other. In three minutes the clerk reported that “it”–just some letter of the alphabet–had been sold at such and such a price.

For another five minutes Jarrocks denied himself to all visitors. Then he called for another report on the stock which he had just caused to be sold. It was selling “off a half.”

“Well, Cynthia,” said Jarrocks, “you’re fifty dollars richer than when you came. Now I’ve got to tell you to go. I’ll look out for your interests as if they were my own.”

And Jarrocks, looking rather stupid and bored, conducted Cynthia through his outer offices and put her into an elevator “going down.” Her face vanished and his heart continued to mumble and grumble, just the way a tooth does when it is getting ready to ache.

Cynthia had entered Wall Street at an auspicious moment. Stocks were at that high level from which they presently tumbled to the panic quotations of nineteen-seven. And Jarrocks, whom the unsuccessful thought so very stupid, had made a very shrewd guess as to what was going to happen.

Two weeks later he wrote Cynthia that if she could use two or three thousand dollars she could have them, without troubling her balance very perceptibly.

“I thought you had a chance,” he wrote. “I’m beginning to think it’s a sure thing! Keep a stiff upper lip and first thing you know you’ll have the laugh on mamma and papa. Give ’em my best regards.”

VI

If it is wicked to gamble Cynthia was wicked. If it is wicked to lie Cynthia was wicked. If the money that comes out of Wall Street belonged originally to widows and orphans, why, that is the kind of money which she amassed for her own selfish purposes. Worst of all, on learning from Jarrocks that the Rainbow’s Foot–where the pot of gold is–was almost in sight, this bad, wicked girl’s sensations were those of unmixed triumph and delight!