"She's a wonder, Mark," he said heartily.

Mark nodded an emphatic approval. Words, which Ben perhaps looked for,
he did not add. Everything had been said in the one word "congratulate."

"Sprang from good old pioneer stock, too, Mark," said Gaynor. "Wouldn't
think now, to look at her, that she was born at Gold Run in a family as
rugged as yours and mine, would you? With precious few advantages until
she was a girl grown, look at what she has made of herself! While you
and I and the likes of us have been content to stay pretty much in the
rough, she hasn't. There's not a more accomplished, cultured little
woman this or the other side Boston, even if she did hail from Gold Run.
And as for Gloria, all her doing; why," and he chuckled, "she hasn't the
slightest idea, I suppose, that she ever had a grandfather who sweated
and went about in shirt-sleeves and chewed tobacco and swore!"

"Have to go all the way back to a grandfather?" laughed King.

"Look at me!" challenged Gaynor, thrusting into notice his immaculate
attire. He chuckled. "One must live down his disgraceful past for his
daughter, you know."

From without came a gust of shouts and laughter from the Gaynor guests
skylarking along the lake shore.

"Come," said Ben. "You'll have to meet the crowd, Mark. And I want you
to see my little girl; I've told her so many yarns about you that she's
dying of curiosity."