o spruce up so!" interrupted Mrs. Ellis.

"It has been so blamed lonesome whenever she went to visit you, but yet
I wouldn't say a word because I knew what a good time she had; but if I
had known that there was a confounded, long-legged, sniffy young idiot
all that while trying to steal my daughter away from me!" In an access
of wrath at the idea Armorer wrenched off the picket that he clutched,
at which he laughed and stuck his hands in his pockets.

"Why, Meg, the papers and magazines are always howling that women won't
marry," cried he, with a fresh sense of grievance; "now, two of my girls
have married, that's enough; there was no reason for me to expect any
more of them would! There isn't one d---- bit of need for Esther to
marry!"

"But if she loves the young fellow and he loves her, won't you let them
be happy?"

"He won't make her happy."

"He is a very good fellow, truly and really, 'Raish. And he comes of a
good family----"

"I don't care for his family; and as to his being moral and all that, I
know several young fellows that could skin him alive in a bargain
that are moral as you please. I have been a moral man, myself. But the
trouble with this Lossing (I told Esther I didn't know anything about
him, but I do), the trouble with him is that he is chock full of all
kinds of principles! Just as father was. Don't you remember how he lost
parish after parish because he couldn't smooth over the big men in them?
Lossing is every bit as pig-headed. I am not going to have my daughter
lead the kind of life my mother did. I want a son-in-law who ain't going
to think himself so much better than I am, and be rowing me for my way
of doing business. If Esther MUST marry I'd like her to marry a man with
a head on him that I can take into business, and who will be willing to
live with the old man. This Lossing has got his notions of making a sort
of Highland chief affair of the labor question, and we should get along
about as well as the Kilkenny cats!"

Mrs. Ellis knew more than Esther about Armorer's business methods,
having the advantage of her husband's point of view; and Colonel Ellis
had kept the army standard of honor as well as the army ignorance of
business. To counterbalance, she knew more than anyone alive what a good
son and brother Horatio had always been. But she could not restrain a
smile at the picture of the partnership.

"Precisely, you see yourself," said Armorer. "Meg"--hesitating--"you
don't s