“It is splendid.  Do you mind telling me how much you paid?”

“I paid forty-five dollars.  It’s worth more.”

“Forty-five dollars!” ejaculated Conrad.  “Why, you must be a millionaire.  Where did you get so much money?”

“I didn’t find it in the street,” answered Fred jocularly.

“Can’t you tell a feller?  You didn’t save it out of your wages, did you?”

“My wages?  I should say not.  Why, I only get six dollars a week, and have to pay car fare and lunches out of that.”

“Then it isn’t equal to my five dollars, for that is all clear.  But, all the same, I can’t save anything.”

“Nor I.”

“Then how can you afford to buy forty-five dollar rings?”

“I don’t mind telling you,” said Fred.  “I made the money by speculating.”

“Speculating!” repeated Conrad, still in the dark.

“Yes.  I’ll tell you all about it.”

“Do! there’s a good fellow.”

“You see, I bought fifty Erie shares on a margin.”

“How’s that?”

“Why I got a broker to buy me fifty shares on a margin of one per cent.  He did it to oblige me.  I hadn’t any money to put up, but I had done him one or two favors, and he did it out of good nature.  As the stock was on the rise, he didn’t run much of a risk.  Well, I bought at 44 and sold at 45 1-4.  So I made fifty dollars over and above the commission.  I tell you I felt good when the broker paid me over five ten-dollar bills.”

“I should think you would.”

“I was afraid I’d spend the money foolishly, so I went right off and bought this ring.  I can sell it for what I gave any time.”

Conrad’s cupidity was greatly excited by this remarkable luck of Fred’s.

“That seems an easy way of making money,” he said.  “Do you think I could try it?”

“Anybody can do it if he’s got the money to plank down for a margin.”

“I don’t think I quite understand.”

“Then I’ll tell you.  You buy fifty shares of stock, costing, say, fifty dollars a share.”

“That would be twenty-five hundred dollars.”

“Yes, if you bought it right out.  But you don’t.  You give the broker whatever per cent. he requires, say a dollar a share—­most of them don’t do it so cheap—­and he buys the stock on your account.  If it goes up one or two points, say to fifty-one or fifty-two, he sells out, and the profit goes to you, deducting twenty-five cents a share which he charges for buying and selling.  Besides that, he pays you back your margin.”

“That’s splendid.  But doesn’t it ever go down?”

“I should say so.  If it goes down a dollar a share, then, of course, you lose fifty dollars.”

Conrad looked serious.  This was not quite so satisfactory.

“It is rather risky, then,” he said.

“Of course, there’s some risk; but you know the old proverb, ’Nothing venture, nothing have.’  You must choose the right stock—­one that is going up.”