in rickety skiffs. The community took as much pride in
her adventures as it did in his achievements.

The Madeiras were very happy together all through those days, and very
proud of each other. She recognised that her father was superior to the
Canaan men, that they did what he told them to do, and he recognised
that she was the most wonderful child, and the most beautiful, that had
ever come into the world. His convictions on that score were so profound
that they seemed to him something surer and bigger than the customary
paternal pride and affection. As the girl grew older he spent a great
deal of his money on her education and pleasure--at first blindly,
guided only by a big impulse to have her as good as the best, an impulse
that resulted in some funnily pathetic scenes where the little girl,
frightfully over-dressed, wandered through the St. Louis shops, holding
to the big man's finger, trying to think up something else that she
might possibly want. Later, under the girl's own direction, the money
went to better purpose.

His daughter's way of spending the money early became, in Madeira's
manner of getting at the thing, a sort of balance-wheel to his way of
making it. Although he had made money in the same way before she was
born, and although he would have made it in the same way had she never
been born, he grew to like the feeling that what he did he did for her,
and that his desire to make money had a soul in his desire to have her
spend it. This feeling was in the ascendant always when he was with her.
Unconsciously she fanned it within him. She had spent her young life
couched rosily on his love for her and hers for him; at home she was
lonely; at home Madeira was well-nigh perfect, and the girl's
imagination made all her ideals live in the big, handsome, assertive
man who was at once father to her and hero. Perceiving this, Madeira,
with her, entered into a sort of world of make-believe, and, with her,
was sometimes able to take himself for what she held him, a man whose
honour matched his ability, and, with her, sometimes surprised in
himself the little glow that she seemed to get when she was profoundly
appreciating him.

One Sunday afternoon they were sitting, father and daughter, in the
garden, behind the brick house, he with a St. Louis paper on his knee,
his head bare, his waistcoat loose, his feet in slippers. His chair was
tilted back against a crab-apple tree at the side of one of the garden
walks