“Little beggar, isn’t he?” Cady remarked.  “Has he got a brother?  I’d like to give one to—­you know!”

“He’s alone in the world.  I’m his nearest of kin.”

“Give you five dollars for him,” Cady offered.

“I just paid five hundred, and he’s worth a thousand.  Why, his people came over ahead of the Mayflower.”

The gloomy lover was interested; in his face there gleamed a faint desire.  “Think of it!  Well, make it a thousand.  I’ll send him in a bunch of orchids.  Haw!” He doubled over his stick, convulsed with appreciation of his own originality.  But again Bob refused.  “Don’t be nasty, I’ll make it fifteen hundred.”

Bob carefully replaced the canine atom and grinned at his friend.

“I need the money, but—­nothing doing.”

“Up against it?” hopefully inquired the other.

“Broke!  I couldn’t afford a nickel to see an earthquake.”

“I’ll lend you fifteen hundred and take Ying as security.”

But Bob remained inflexible, and Mr. Cady relapsed into gloom, muttering: 

“Gee!  You’re a rotten business man!”

“So says my heartless father.  He has sewed up my pockets and scuttled my drawing-account, hence the dinner-pail on my arm.  I’m in quest of toil.”

“I’ll bet you starve,” brightly predicted Mr. Cady, in an effort at encouragement.  “I’ll lay you five thousand that you make a flivver of anything you try.”

“I’ve quit gambling, too.”

As they shook hands Cady grunted:  “My invitation to globe-trot is withdrawn.  Fine company you’d be!”

As Bob walked up the Avenue he pondered deeply, wondering if he really were so lacking in ability as his friends believed.  Money was such a common thing, after all; the silly labor of acquiring it could not be half so interesting as the spending of it.  Anybody could make money, but to enjoy it, to circulate it judiciously, one must possess individuality—­of a sort.  Money seemed to come to some people without effort, and from the strangest sources—­Kurtz, for instance, had grown rich out of coats and trousers!

Bob halted, frowning, while Ying peered out from his hiding-place at the passing throngs, exposing a tiny, limp, pink-ribbon tongue.  If Kurtz, armed only with a pair of shears and a foolish tape, had won to affluence, why couldn’t another?  Stock-broking was no longer profitable; none of Bob’s friends had earned their salt for months; and old Hannibal’s opposition evidently forced a change of occupation.

The prospect of such a change was annoying, but scarcely alarming to an ingrained optimist, and Bob took comfort in reflecting that the best-selling literature of the day was replete with instances of disinherited sons, impoverished society men, ruined bankers, or mere idlers, who by lightning strokes of genius had mended their fortunes overnight.  Some few, in the earlier days of frenzied fiction, had played the market, others the ponies, still others had gone West and developed abandoned gold-mines or obscure water-powers.  A number also had grown disgustingly rich from patenting rat-traps or shoe-buttons.  One young man had discovered a way to keep worms out of railroad-ties and had promptly bludgeoned the railroad companies out of fabulous royalties.