"And now what are you going to do?" Agnes asked him, laughing this time. "Fight!" he declared exultantly. "I'm going to fight entirely outside of my father's money. I'm going to fight with my own brawn and my own brain and my own resources and my own personal following! Why, Agnes, that is what the governor has been goading me to do. It is what all this is planned for, and the governor, after all, is right!" CHAPTER XVIII SOME EMINENT ARTISTS AMUSE MEESTER BURNIT WHILE HE WAITS One might imagine, after Bobby's heroic declarations, that, like young David of old, he would immediately proceed to stride forth and slay his giant. There stood his Goliath, full panoplied, sneering, waiting; but alas! Bobby had neither sling nor stone. It was all very well to announce in fine frenzy that he would smash the Consolidated, destroy the political ring, drive Sam Stone and his henchmen out of town and wrest all his goods and gear from Silas Trimmer; but until he could find a place to plant his foot, descry an opening in the armor and procure an adequate weapon, he might just as well bottle his fuming and wait; so Bobby waited. In the meantime he stuck very closely to the Brightlight office, finding there, in the practice of petty economics and the struggle with well-nigh impossible conditions, ample food for thought. In a separate bank reposed the new fund of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, which he kept religiously aside from the affairs of the Brightlight, and this fund also waited; for Bobby was not nearly so feverish to find instant employment for it as he had been with the previous ones--though he had endless chances. People with the most unheard of schemes seemed to have a peculiar scent for unsophisticated money, and not only local experts in the gentle art of separation flocked after him, but out of town specialists came to him in shoals. To these latter he took great satisfaction in displaying the gem of his collection of post-mortem letters from old John Burnit: "You don't need to go away from home to be skinned; moreover, it isn't patriotic." That usually stopped them. He was growing quite sophisticated, was Bobby, quite able to discern the claws beneath the velvet paw, quite suspicious of all the ingenious gentlemen who wanted to make a fortune for him; and their frantic attempts to "get his goat," as Biff Bates expressed it, had become as good as a play to this wise young person, as also to the wise young person's trustee.