and for yourself that sedan of my niece's? It's a good car. Last
year's model, but only run about four thousand miles and in tiptop
condition. It's always had the best of care, and I imagine it will
please Mrs. P. immensely and grant you surcease from sorrow. Of
course, I will not give it to you. I'll sell it to you--five hundred
down upon the signing of the agreement, and in lieu of the cash, I
will take over that jitney Mrs. Poundstone finds so distasteful. Then
I will employ your son Henry as the attorney for the Laguna Grande
Lumber Company and give him a retainer of twenty-five hundred dollars
for one year. I will leave it to you to get this twenty-five hundred
dollars from Henry and pay my niece cash for the car. Doesn't that
strike you as a perfectly safe and sane proposition?"

Had a vista of paradise opened up before Mr. Poundstone, he could not
have been more thrilled. He had been absolutely honest in his plea to
Mrs. Poundstone that he could not afford a thirty-two-hundred-and-
fifty-dollar sedan, much as he longed to oblige her and gain a
greatly to be desired peace. And now the price was dangling before
his eyes, so to speak. At any rate it was parked in the porte-cochere
not fifty feet distant!

For the space of a minute the Mayor weighed his son's future as a
corporation attorney against his own future as mayor of Sequoia--and
Henry lost.

"It might be arranged, Colonel," he murmured in a low voice--the
voice of shame.

"It is already arranged," the Colonel replied cheerfully. "Leave your
jit at the front gate and drive home in Shirley's car. I'll arrange