"Why, I suppose I am," says J. Meredith, "under certain conditions."

"Z-z-zin'!" says I. "And you hangin' onto a cheap skate job at the
Corrugated!"

Well, while he's showin' me around the grounds I pumps out the rest of
the sketch. Seems butlers and all that was no new thing to Merry.
He'd been brought up on 'em. He'd lived abroad too. Studied music
there. Not that he ever meant to work at it, but just because he liked
it. You see, about that time the fam'ly income was rollin' in reg'lar
every month from the mills back in Pawtucket, or Fall River, or
somewhere.

Then all of a sudden things begin to happen,--strikes, panics, stock
grabbin' by the trusts. Father's weak heart couldn't stand the strain.
Meredith's mother followed soon after. And one rainy mornin' he wakes
up in Baden Baden, or Monte Carlo, or wherever it was, to find that
he's a double orphan at the age of twenty-two, with no home, no cash,
and no trade. All he could do was to write an S. O. S. message back to
Aunt Emma Jane. If she hadn't produced, he'd been there yet.

But Aunty got him out of pawn. Panics and so on hadn't cleaned out her
share of the Stidler estate--not so you'd notice it! She'd been on the
spot, Aunt Emma had, watchin' the market. Long before the jinx hit
Wall Street she'd cashed in her mill stock for gold ballast, and when
property prices started tumblin' she dug up a lard pail from under the
syringa bush and begun investin' in bargain counter real estate. Now
she owns business blocks, villa plots, and shore frontage in big
chunks, and spends her time collectin' rents, makin' new deals, and
swearin' off her taxes.