I, 'if I understand you, this is all the money you have'--it was four hundred and odd, I believe--'and you want to put it into Lone Star common. Now,' says I, 'of course that's a perfectly safe investment, solid as United States bonds, non-taxable, pays nine per cent., and will double in value in the natural course of events before another six months; and what you say is quite true, that you will never have another opportunity of getting it as low as forty-five'--she was really a shrewd and intelligent woman for her class, and for a minute I was almost tempted to let her have her way, for, of course, there wasn't the slightest risk. 'Now,' said I, 'if you had two or three thousand or even one thousand to spare, mind you, I say _to spare_, I should say to you, go ahead, by all means. But,' says I, 'I can't take the responsibility of letting you invest your last cent this way, just on my say-so. I've got my own money in it, but my money and your money are two very different propositions. Go and consult your lawyer, get the advice of your friends, go to another broker for that matter, if you choose. All I would urge is, _do it soon_, or you may lose a great chance, such as don't come along every day.' She was very reluctant, but I finally persuaded her; she was just going as you came along. Oh, of course, I know very well, nobody better after all my experience, that she may have gone straight off to some other broker as I suggested, and _he'll_ get the commission, not being so--well, so squeamish as I am, but William Pallinder isn't that--kind, Doctor; we can't help the way we're made, and I'm--not--that--kind!" He spaced the last words out, emphasising them by a gentle blow with a ruler on the palm of his hand, and leaned back, surveying his companion through a haze of cigar smoke, with the expression of one who might have added, were it necessary: "Behold in me a monument of integrity!" Doctor Vardaman gazed at the El Paso and Rio Grande circulars with a new respect. Was it possible, he asked himself, that he ought to revise his opinion of Pallinder? To be sure, Huddesley had hinted--but what does a servant's chatter amount to? And then there was that business of the unpaid rent--but Gwynne had not seemed to take that very seriously, and surely he should know. As to that flourishing manner of the colonel's, we are prone to associate it with--well, with buncombe, in plain words; yet it was, in fact, entirely natural, the direct result of certain traditions, early environment, and upbringing. He had reached this point in his reflections, smoking silently, when the colonel was most unfortunately inspired to remark: