Miss Dividends Part 43

"Belcher!" cries Lawrence. "Good Heavens! I've got two hundred shares of that stock in my pocketbook, and have forgotten all about it!"

"Oh!" says Erma, "that was the stock you had when you first heard that I was Bishop Tranyon's daughter--and you forgot your investment for me!"

"Well, Providence has rewarded him for it, for I think Belcher must be up to a thousand dollars a share, by this time!" laughs Ralph.

And telegraphing San Francisco, Lawrence finds this is the fact, and sells out his Belcher stock for something over eleven hundred dollars a share, making nearly two hundred thousand dollars by the transaction.

"Luck is upon you, young man!" says the ex-bishop. "Your election comes up at the Unity Club to-morrow. I've no doubt you'll go in--but that Oliver Livingston may give you trouble."

"Oh, I think not!" cries Erma, "his mother has been so very kind to me, as, in fact, have all my old friends."

For some rumors of the peculiar adventures that have made Miss Travenion Mrs. Lawrence have got into circulation, and in them Harry has been made a Western hero and a frontier demi-G.o.d. Besides, society is generally very nice to a young and beautiful woman who has sixty thousand a year of her own, a rich husband, and richer father, and who is going to have a fine mansion on Fifth Avenue, and give many dinner parties and a german or two each season.

"I differ with you, my dear," returns Ralph. "Oliver Livingston is an infamous cad."

"Why, what has he done now?" asks Lawrence, noting the excitement in his father-in-law's manner.

"What has he done?" cries Travenion. "The miserable sneak has told in the Unity the story of the Mormon club man--the story I risked my life to originate. I told it to-day with graphic elaboration, and Larry Jerry and the rest only half smiled, and said they believed Mr. Livingston had told them that yarn about a month ago. I shall never tell it again!"

"Don't!" cries his daughter. "Don't make me ashamed of you." Then she says more calmly: "What have you done about your families out there?"

"Oh, they're provided for _well_!" remarks Ralph. "I believe one of them, the genuine Mrs. Travenion"--he winces a little at the t.i.tle--"would have made me trouble, but I think the Church instructed her to let me alone; I know a few secrets of theirs that make them quite amiable to me, now I'm out of their clutches. Their delegate to congress, the one who has four wives in Utah, and declares he is not a polygamist in Washington, might not like me to explain what I know of his large family," chuckles the old gentleman.

But for all this, he does not tell the story of Bishop Tranyon, the New York dandy, very often.

His guess about Oliver Livingston, however, was a shrewd one. For chancing to be on the Governing Committee of the Unity when Lawrence's name comes up for membership, he sneaks in a black-ball, as many another prig and coward, from envy and malice and uncharitableness, has done before, and will do to come.

But this doesn't count much, for Ferdie, who chances to be its youngest member, has gone about with his winning manner and boyish frankness, and has b.u.t.ton-holed everybody, saying, "Hang it! You must put Harry Lawrence through. He's the man who saved my life. He's from the wild and woolly West, but some day he's going to make New York howl!"

So Lawrence goes in.

Though he doesn't do quite as much as Ferdie has promised for him--for he is too happy to be inordinately ambitious--and is contented to be a successful railroad director, and have a yacht on the water and a villa in Newport, and a town-house on the avenue, and to be the husband of Miss Dividends.

FINISH.