Mr. and Mrs. Richard Sheridan Flanders paid frequent visits to the home of Mr. Bingle. The beautiful and popular Miss Colgate, the sensation of the early season and a certain candidate for stellar honours, never came to see the young Bingles without betraying a spirit of generosity which sometimes caused Mr. Bingle to sit up half the night treating stomach-aches of all ages and degrees. She brought candy and cakes and fruit for the children, and flowers for Mr. Bingle. She would have come laden with more substantial and less pernicious presents but for the gentle objections of her old friend and benefactor. In the face of his kindly protests, she abandoned certain well-meant, even cherished ideas, and was often sore at heart. Dick Flanders had found a producer after all. His hopes, considerably dashed by the Supreme Court of the United States of America, were at a low ebb when a practically unknown manager from the Far West concluded that there was more to his play than the wise men of the East were able to discern at a glance. With more sense than intelligence, the Westerner leaped into the heart of New York with a new play by a new author and scored a success from the opening night. Amy Colgate, an unknown actress, became famous in a night, so to speak. After the holidays, there would be a company playing the piece in Chicago, and another doing the "big stands" throughout the length and breadth of the land. So much for Mr. Flanders' play and Miss Amy Colgate. Mr. Bingle never ceased congratulating himself and his two successful friends on the fact that he had not invested a cent of the Hooper fortune in the production. For, said he, if he had put a penny into it, the Hooper heirs would now be dividing the profits with Flanders. "Luck was with us for once, Dick," he was prone to repeat. "A week later and we would have been desperately involved. I would have put up the initial ten thousand dollars for the production and you would have been saddled with Geoffrey and his sisters, perhaps for life--and I can't imagine anything more unnecessary than that. Yes, sir, the smash came just in the nick o' time. What at first appeared to you to be a calamity turned out to be a God-send, my boy. The Supreme Court behaved handsomely by you." This always brought out a vigorous protest from Mr. and Mrs. Flanders. They stoutly maintained that Mr. Bingle was an original partner in the enterprise, and, when it came right down to tacks, had put quite as much capital into the business as either of them. They contended that he should have a share in the royalties, if not in the profits. "As a matter of fact, Mr. Bingle, you made so many valuable suggestions in respect to the play--dialogues, construction and so forth--that you really ought to take some of the consequences," said Flanders. "It isn't fair to put all the blame upon me. For instance, who was responsible for cutting out that scene in the second act?"