"Fair? Oh, yes. That sort of thing'll always be fair--as long as there's any business. Queer, though, when you come to think of it. _We_ hadn't any grudge against the other fellows; but they'd have stolen our idea, so we had to protect it. If they'd stolen our ten dollar bill, they'd have had to go to jail for it; but they could have stolen an idea worth ten _thousand_, and we'd just have had to stand back, and gibber. As long as _that's_ fair, then _we_ were fair." "I wonder," she said, "if all monopolists go through the same thing--first, they get such a wonderful scheme that they hardly dare to go to bed for fear they'll talk in their sleep: then they're crazy for fear it won't work; then it _does_ work, and they think they're the Lord's anointed; and bye-and-bye they look around and feel--sort of apologetic." "Oh. Do _you_ feel apologetic?" "I'm looking around, anyway." "You'd better save your energy. Mix's amendment's coming up pretty soon, and even if it doesn't pass, I don't see how we're going to compete with this weather. It's so abominably beautiful that it's--sickening." "Oh--Mix!" she said, scornfully. "It gives me the creeps just to hear his name! He's a nasty hypocrite, and a sneak, and a--How long do you suppose he'll be hurrying around with that pious air after he gets his money? Why, he won't even stay in the League!" Henry grimaced. "You're wrong. If he gets his money, he _will_ stay in the League, and I'll bet on it." There was a short silence. "Henry," she burst out, "everything considered, I believe he wants your uncle's money more than we do!" "Whichever one of us gets it,--" said Henry grimly, "--He'll _earn_ it!" * * * * * When he recalled his previous years of irresponsibility, he was staggered to realize how little a fifty dollar bill had meant to him. It had meant a casual request across the breakfast table; now, it meant that seventy-five or a hundred people were willing to pay him a few cents apiece for the result of his headaches; and the absence of those people, and the failure of those receipts, meant the difference between achievement and bitter downfall. He had risked everything on his monopoly, and added six thousand dollars to his quota. For two months, he had carried the double load, and beaten his schedule; in early May, he was falling behind at the rate of fifty dollars a week. With twelve weeks ahead, he faced a deficit of a paltry six hundred dollars--and the Mix amendment was peeping over the horizon.