around them all, and look out the window till I dropped."

"Oh, you would, would you?" demanded her father,
delighted with her defiance, and twisting his fat head
around over his shoulder to look at her. "Well, you
wouldn't do it on my money, if you were a son of MINE,
young lady."

"Oh, you wait and see," retorted the girl.

This made them all laugh. But the Colonel recurred
seriously to the subject that night, as he was winding
up his watch preparatory to putting it under his pillow.

"I could make a man of that fellow, if I had him in the
business with me. There's stuff in him. But I spoke
up the way I did because I didn't choose Irene should
think I would stand any kind of a loafer 'round--I don't
care who he is, or how well educated or brought up.
And I guess, from the way Pen spoke up, that 'Rene saw
what I was driving at."

The girl, apparently, was less anxious about her
father's ideas and principles than about the impression
which he had made upon the young man. She had talked
it over and over with her sister before they went
to bed, and she asked in despair, as she stood looking
at Penelope brushing out her hair before the glass--

"Do you suppose he'll think papa always talks in that