“It’s got a funny name,” she answered.  “It almost sounds as if they meant it for a joke—­Horse’s Neck Extension.”

“I guess they meant it for a joke all right—­on the public,” chuckled her employer.  “How many shares are there?”

“A hundred thousand,” she answered.

“Jumping Jehoshaphat!” ejaculated Mr. Tutt.  “How on earth did old Doc manage to get hold of them?”

“It sold for only ten cents a share!” replied Miss Wiggin.  “That would mean ten thousand dollars—­”

“If Doc paid for it,” supplemented Mr. Tutt.  “Which he probably didn’t.  What’s it selling for now?”

“It isn’t selling at all.”

Mr. Tutt pressed the button that summoned Willie.

“When you haven’t anything better to do,” he said to her, “why don’t you go round and see what has become of—­of—­Horse’s Neck Extension?”

“I will,” assented Miss Wiggin.  “It makes me feel rich just to talk about such things.  I just love it.”

“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.”