"Suppose you just pay the whole bill yourself, and let us pay you," he suggested in an offhand way to Meers. "It looks so much better all in one lump." Of course, Mr. Meers was agreeable to this eminently respectable suggestion; but when Wallingford handed over his own check it was dated a week ahead. "If this won't do you I'll have to give up some cash," he explained with an easy laugh. "I'm having some securities negotiated back East to open an account here, and it may take three or four days to have it arranged." Meers heard him with a curious smile. "I beat a pleasant stranger's head off once for putting up a line of talk like that," he commented; "but, of course, this is different," and he took the check. He had become an enthusiastic admirer of Wallingford's undoubted genius, and at nothing was he more amused than by the caliber of the three other incorporators who had been chosen. Stock valuations were at once made for these three, at an exaggerated estimate of the value of their concerns, and when they came to Meers himself the same plan was followed. [Illustration: "YOUR FINE LITTLE WIFE HERE SWEARS THAT IT WILL"] "For," said Wallingford, "to make this strong you have to come in just like the rest, and I have to take up the balance of the stock right now as trustee." Meers balked a trifle at that. "I never feel so cheerful as when I'm my own stakeholder," he stated frankly. "When I hold all the coin it's a cinch I'll get mine, but when somebody else holds it I keep trained down for a foot race." "Fix it any way to suit yourself," offered Wallingford with a carelessness that he was far from feeling. "If you can figure out a better stunt, show it to me." Mr. Meers tried earnestly to think of a better plan but was forced to concede that there was none. "Oh, well," he gave in at last, "it don't matter. It's only for a week or so I'll have to rub salve on my fingers to cure that itch." "Certainly," Wallingford assured him. "It won't take more than a week, after we get the stock certificates from the printers, to make all the transfers, and then we'll have from a hundred and twenty to a hundred and forty thousand dollars' worth to split up. If we can't make that yield us five or six thousand a year apiece, aside from salaries, the buying and manufacturing grafts and other rake-offs, we ought to have guardians appointed." "Fine business," agreed Meers complacently.