So permit me to make another proposition.

I will build the twenty theatres myself, and furnish the films for them, provided the young ladies will agree to assume the entire management of them when they are completed." Dead silence followed this speech.

The girls did some rapid-fire mental calculations and realized that this young man was proposing to invest something like fourteen hundred thousand dollars, in order that they might carry out their philanthropic conception.

Why should he do this, even if he could afford it?
Both Mr.Merrick and Arthur Weldon were staring stolidly at the floor.
Their attitudes expressed, for the first time, doubt--if not positive unbelief.

As men of considerable financial experience, they regarded the young islander's proposition as an impossible one.
Jones noted this blank reception of his offer and glanced appealingly at Patsy.