Agnes, who was helping Bobby wait, came occasionally to the office of the Brightlight on business, and nearly always Bobby had reduced to paper some gaudy new scheme that had been proposed to him, over which they both might laugh. In great hilarity one morning they were going over the prospectus of a plan to reclaim certain swamp lands in Florida, when the telephone bell rang, and from Bobby's difficulty in understanding and his smile as he hung up the receiver, Agnes knew that something else amusing had turned up. [Illustration: Little me to trot out and find an angel. Are you it?] "It is from Schmirdonner," he explained as he turned to her again. "He's the conductor of the orchestra at the Orpheum, you know. I gather from what he says that there are some stranded musicians here who probably speak worse English than myself, and he's sending them up to me to see about arranging a benefit for them. You'd better wait; it might be fun, or you might want to help arrange the benefit." "No," disclaimed Agnes, laughing and drawing her impedimenta together for departure, "I'll leave both the fun and the philanthropy to you. I know you're quite able to take care of them. I'll just wait long enough to hear how we're to get rid of the water down in Florida. I suppose we bore holes in the ground and let it run out." "By no means," laughed Bobby. "It's no where near so absurdly simple as that," and he turned once more to the prospectus which lay open on the desk before them. Before they were through with it there suddenly erupted into the outer office, where Johnson and Applerod glared at each other day by day over their books, a pandemonium of gabbling. Agnes, with a little exclamation of dismay at the time she had wasted, rose in a hurry, and immediately after she passed through the door there bounded into the room a rotund little German with enormous and extremely thick glasses upon his knob of a nose, a grizzled mustache that poked straight up on both sides of that knob, and an absurd toupee that flared straight out all around on top of the bald spot to which it was pasted. Behind him trailed a pudgy man of so exactly the Herr Professor's height and build that it seemed as if they were cast in the same spherical mold, but he was much younger and had jet black hair and a jet black mustache of such tiny proportions as to excite amazement and even awe. Still behind him was as unusually large young woman, fully a head taller than either of the two men, who had an abundance of jet black hair, and was dressed in a very rich robe and wrap, both of which were somewhat soiled and worn. "Signor R-r-r-r-icardo, der grosse tenore--Mees-ter Burnit," introduced the rotund little German, with a deep bow commensurate with the greatness of the great tenor. "Signorina Car-r-r-avaggio--Mees-ter Burnit. I, Mees-ter Burnit, _Ich bin_ Brofessor Fruehlingsvogel."