"If he'll take you in the office with him, he'll do all right," he answered her banteringly; but when he went up-stairs and found his wife he said: "Constance, if that girl don't pull Bobby Burnit through his puppyhood in good shape there is something wrong with the scheme of creation. There is something about you women of the Elliston family that every once in a while makes me pause and reverence the Almighty," whereupon Aunt Constance flushed prettily, as became her. With the same earnestness of purpose Agnes handled the question of Bobby's breach-of-promise suit in so far as it affected his social reception. The Ellistons went to the theater and sat in a box to exhibit him on the second night after his return, and Agnes took careful count of all the people she knew who attended the theater that night. The next day she went to see all of them, among others Mrs. Horace Wickersham, whose social word was social law. "My dear," said the redoubtable Mrs. Wickersham, "it does Bobby Burnit great credit that he did not marry the creature. Of course I shall invite him to our affair next Friday night." After that there could be no further question of Bobby's standing, though without the firm support of Agnes he might possibly have been ostracised, for a time at least. It was with much less certainty that she spread before Bobby the facts and figures which Uncle Dan had secured about the condition and prospects of the _Bulletin_. She did not urge the project upon him. Instead, though in considerable anxiety, she left the proposition open to his own judgment. He pondered the question more soberly and seriously than he had yet considered anything. There were but two chances left to redeem himself now, and he felt much like a gambler who has been reduced to his last desperate stake. He grew almost haggard over the proposition, and he spent two solid weeks in investigation. He went to Washington to see Jack Starlett, who knew three or four newspaper proprietors in Philadelphia and elsewhere. He obtained introductions to these people and consulted with them, inspected their plants and listened to all they would say; as they liked him, they said much. Ripened considerably by what he had found out he came back home and bought the _Bulletin_. Moreover, he had very definitely made up his mind precisely what to do with it. On the first morning that he walked into the office of that paper as its sole owner and proprietor, he called the managing editor to him and asked: "What, heretofore, has been the politics of this paper?" "Pale yellow jelly," snapped Ben Jolter wrathfully. "Supposed to be anti-Stone, hasn't it been?" Bobby smilingly inquired. "But always perfectly ladylike in what it said about him." "And what are the politics of the employees?" At this Mr. Jolter snorted. "They are good newspaper men, Mr. Burnit," he stated in quick defense; "and a good newspaper man has no politics."