The only buyer was young Mr. Stuyvesant. If he had not bought, the price would have melted away, and good hard cash with it.
Mrs. Buxton was blissfully unconscious of her own good luck, until John D. Mitchell and Co. sent her a check for $450 for the quarter, explaining why thereafter her income would be $1800 a year instead of $1500. Mrs. Buxton was grateful, not to a foolish young gambler's bad play, but to the brokers. She thanked them effusively for their kindness to the widow of their old friend and client. Her belief in her intuition grew firm. One great man long ago called it a belief in his star.
"He always," she assured them,—she meant her husband,—"thought a great deal of you, and I cannot tell you how glad I am that I left the Lakeside stock in your care. I felt I was doing a wise thing. I was not mistaken. I am very grateful to you. I am sure that he knows what you have done for me and thanks you." She did not know the exigencies of the stock-market. But her intuition made fewer mistakes than many people, Beekman Stuyvesant among others.
The brokers would have written to her a more detailed explanation had not the market in general and Lakeside in particular become extremely interesting. The Young Napoleon was confronted by a serious problem: To allow the price of Lakeside to sink now meant to allow the Stuyvesant fortune to shrink. Even as it was, every day that passed meant an evaporation of gold—thousands of dollars for interest on the enormous sums Beekman III. had been obliged to borrow to carry on his speculation. The public persisted, asininely, in not buying Lakeside stock from Beekman III. A Stuyvesant had blundered; so a family council was held.
The eldest brother, Theophilus, told Beekman that he was a foolish boy. Why must he gamble?
"Aw!" retorted the young man, "I only wanted to make a little turn in the market."
"Yes, but why?" snivelled Theophilus. To make money was a Stuyvesant privilege. To lose it was the other man's duty.
"Well, I did. That's all there is to it. Now, how are we to get out of it?" Beekman was not so foolish, as his use of the plural showed.
"But, Beekie, if you hadn't got in—"
"Never mind, Theophilus," soothingly said their brother-in-law Carnarvon. He had married a great heiress. It had made him sweet-tempered.
"But if he sells now," persisted Theophilus, "somebody may get control of the Lakeside in the open market. It would be lost to the Great Midland, Beekie, don't you see?"
"Then let the Midland buy it," said Beekie. He said this sapiently. He really had spoken to show that he wished to help out the rest of the family by taking an interest in his own affairs. But Theophilus was a genuine Stuyvesant.
"That's it," he exclaimed, triumphantly. "I declare you're really very clever." Beekman nodded. He agreed with his brother.
"Well," continued Theophilus, "the Midland will take it off your hands and issue its own stock in exchange for Lakeside stock, and—"
But Beekman III. in the last six weeks had had more than his fill of trying to sell stock. He shook his head again, and looked wiser than ever.
"Stock won't do. Make it bonds. What's the matter with a collateral trust bond, secured by Lakeside stock, but guaranteed, principal and interest, by the Great Midland?"
It was Napoleonic; worthy of Beekman I.
"By George!" gasped Carnarvon. The audacity of it took away his breath. He was a Stuyvesant by marriage only. But Theophilus, who naturally thought the gasp was one of admiration, shouted:
"Beekie, why, of course! Send for Colonel Channing."
Colonel Mortimer F. Channing, president of the Great Midland and general factotum of the family, was summoned. He came running. As soon as he could speak, remembering that he had a reputation as a wit to sustain, he delivered himself:
"You said come! Behold me! Ha! ha! ha!"
Theophilus explained the situation and
