thrilled, yet distrustful. Until now his had been the leading mind, but his power was gone. He resented this, yet was sensible that no resentment must be shown. His talent as a tactician was to be sorely tested. He gently tried out this talent.

"Winona says you ought to come home to dinner."

The magnate replied as from another world.

"I couldn't eat a mouthful," he said, and crowded a cocoanut cream into an oral cavity already distended by a chocolate mouse.

"She says, now, you should save your money and buy some useful thing with it," again ventured the parasite. It was the sign of a nicely sensed acumen that he no longer called it "our" money.

"Ho! Gee, gosh!" spluttered the rich one, and that was all.

"What we going to have next?" demanded the wise one.

"I'll have to think up something." He did not invite suggestions and none were offered. Merle nicely sensed the arrogance of the newly rich. "I know," said the capitalist at length—"candy in a lemon."

"One for each?"

"Of course!" It was no time for petty economies.

Solly Gumble parted with two lemons and two sticks of spirally striped candy of porous fabric. Then the moneyed gourmet dared a new flight.

"Two more sticks," he commanded. "You suck one stick down, then you put another in the same old lemon," he explained.

"I must say!" exclaimed Merle. It was a high moment, but he never used strong language.

When the candy had been imbedded in the lemons they sauntered out to the street, Merle meekly in the rear, the master mind still coerced by brute wealth. They paused before other shop windows, cheeks hollowed above the savory mechanism invented by Patricia Whipple. Down one side of River Street to its last shop, and up the other, they progressed haltingly. At many of the windows the capitalist displayed interest only of the most academic character. At others he made sportive threats. Thus before the jewellery shop of Rapp Brothers he quite unnerved Merle by announcing that he could buy everything in that window if he wanted to—necklaces and rings and pins and gold watches—and he might do this. If, say, he did buy that black marble clock with the prancing gold horse on 

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