The stranger blushed painfully, made an involuntary movement backward,
and Liza Jannan admonished her husband. "Do you know Miss Brundon,
Jasper?" she asked.

Jasper Penny bowed, and Miss Brundon, with an evident effort, smiled,
her shy, blue eyes held resolutely on his countenance. She at once
slipped into the background, talking in a low, clear voice to Graham
Jannan's wife; while the older men enveloped themselves in a fragrant
veil of cigars. "Come, Mary, Susan," Mrs. Jannan directed, "out of this
horrid, masculine odour." Accompanied by her son the women left, and
Stephen turned to his cousin. "Thought, of course, you knew Susan
Brundon," he remarked. "A school mistress, but superior, and a lady. Has
a place on Spruce Street, by Raspberry Alley, for select younger girls;
unique idea, and very successful, I believe."

Jasper Penny said comfortably, "Humm!" The other continued, "I want
Graham to get out to Shadrach Furnace as soon as may be. That old stone
house the foremen have occupied is nearly fixed for him. I am very well
content, Jasper, to have him in the iron trade, with you practically at
its head. No deliberate favours, remember, and I have told him to look
for nothing. But, at the same time--you comprehend: folly not to push
the boy on fast as possible. No reason for us all to go through with
the hardships of the first Gilbert and his times. Must have been
fatiguing, the wilderness and English troubles and all that."

"Splendid, I should say," Jasper Penny replied. He repeated satirically
the conversation he had heard above. "Makes me ill. You will remember
there was a Howat, son of our original settler--now he must have been a
lad! Married some widow or other; wild at first, but made iron in the
end."