electrified his secretary by springing from his chair like a schoolboy
from his seat at the tap of the teacher's dismissing bell. "Auntie Sue!
I should say she couldn't be refused! Where is she?" And before the
secretary could collect his startled thoughts to answer, Homer T. Ward
was out of the room.

When the smiling secretary, the stenographers, and other attending
employees had witnessed a meeting between their dignified chief and
the lovely old lady, which strengthened their conviction that the great
financier was genuinely human, President Ward and Auntie Sue disappeared
into the private office.

"George," said Mr. Ward, as he closed the door of that sacred inner
sanctuary of the Empire Consolidated Savings Bank, "remember I am not in
to any one;--from the Secretary of the Treasury to the Sheriff, I am not
in."

"I understand, sir," returned the still smiling George. And from that
moment until Homer T. Ward should open the door, nothing short of a
regiment could have interrupted the interview between Auntie Sue and her
old pupil.

Placing the dear old lady tenderly in a deep, leather-upholstered chair,
Mr. Ward stood before her as though trying to convince himself that
she was real; while his teacher of those long-ago, boyhood days gazed
smilingly up at him.

"What in the name of all that is unexpected are you doing here, Auntie
Sue?" he demanded; "and why is not Betty Jo with you? Isn't the girl
ever coming home? There is nothing the matter with her, is there? Of