"Yes, but think, too, of the time it will take," he protested. "First of all I must earn money; that is, I must make the _Bulletin_ pay. I can do that. It is on the edge of earning its way right now, but I owe twenty-five thousand dollars. It is going to take a long, long time for me to win this battle, and in it I need you." "I am always right here, Bobby," she reminded him. "I have never failed you when you needed me, have I? But maybe it won't take so long. You say you are going to make the _Bulletin_ pay. If you do that counts for a business success, enough to release you on that side. But really, Bobby, how difficult a task would it be to get back control of your father's store?" "Hopeless, just now," said he. "How much money would it take?" "Well, not so very much in comparison with the business itself," he told her. "I own two hundred and sixty thousand dollars' worth of stock, Trimmer owns two hundred and forty thousand, while sixty thousand more are scattered among his relatives and dependents. That stock is not for sale, that is the trouble; but if I could buy twenty-one thousand dollars of it I could do what I liked with the entire concern." "Then Bobby, let's not think of anything else but how to get that stock. Let's insist on having that for our wedding present." Bobby regarded her gravely for a long time. "Agnes, you're a brick!" he finally concluded. "You're right, as you have always been. We'll wait. But you don't know, oh, you don't know how hard that is for me!" "It is not the easiest thing in the world for me," she gently reminded him. From the time that she had laid her hands in his he had held them, and now he had gathered them to him, pressing them upon his breast. Suddenly, overcome by his great longing for her, he clasped her in his arms and held her, and pressed his lips to hers. For a moment she yielded to that embrace and closed her eyes, and then she gently drew away from him. "We mustn't indulge in that sort of thing very much," she reminded him, "or we're likely to lose all our good resolutions." "Good resolutions," declared Bobby, "are a nuisance." She smiled and shook her head. "Look at the people who haven't any," she reminded him. It was perhaps half an hour later when an idea which brought with it a smile came to her. "We've definitely resolved now to wait until you have either accomplished what you set out to do, or completely failed, haven't we?" "Yes," he assented soberly. "Then I'm going to open one of the letters your father left for us. I have been dying with curiosity to know what is in it," and hurrying up to her secretary she brought down one of the inevitable gray envelopes, addressed: _To My Children Upon the Occasion of Their Deciding to Marry Before the Limit of My Prohibition_ "What I can not for the life of me understand is why the devil you didn't do it long ago!"