she hadn't." He paused
exasperatingly, after the fashion of an orator who realizes that he
has awakened in his audience an alert and respectful interest. "Fine
kettle of fish brewing down there," he resumed darkly, and paused
again, glanced at the ceiling critically as if searching for leaks,
smacked his lips and murmured confidentially a single word: "Snag!"

"'Snag!'" In chorus.

"Snag! In some unaccountable manner, it appears that you three ladies
have aroused in Nan Brent a spirit of antagonism--"

"Nonsense!"

"The idea!"

"Fiddlesticks!"

"I state the condition as I found it. I happen to know that the girl
possesses sufficient means to permit her to live at the Sawdust Pile
for a year at least."

"But isn't she going away?" Mrs. McKaye's voice rose sharply. "Is she
going to break her bargain?"

"Oh, I think not, Mrs. McKaye. She merely complained to me that
somebody begged her to come back to Port Agnew; so she's waiting for
somebody to come down to the Sawdust Pile and beg her to go away
again. She's inclined to be capricious about it, too. One person isn't
enough. She wants three people to call, and she insists that they
be--ah--ladies!"

"Good gracious, Andrew, you don't mean it?"

"I am delivering a message, Mrs. McKaye."

"She must be spoofing you," Jane declared.

"Well, she laughed a good deal about it, Miss Jane, and confided to me
that a bit of lurking devil in your sister's eyes the day you both met
her in the telegraph office gave her the inspiration for this joke.
She believes that she who laughs last laughs best."

Mrs. McKaye was consumed with virtuous indignation.

"The shameless hussy! Does she imagine for a moment that I will submit
to blackmail, that my daughters or myself could afford to be seen
calling upon her at the Sawdust Pile?"

"She wants to force us to recognize her, mother." Jane, recalling that
day in the telegraph-office, sat staring at Daney with flashing eyes.
She was biting the finger of her glove.

"Nothing doing," Elizabeth drawled smilingly.

Mr. Daney nodded his comprehension.

"In that event, ladies," he countered, with malignant joy in his
suppressed soul, "I am requested to remind you that The Laird will be
informed by Miss Brent that she considers him a very short sport,
indeed, if he insists upon regarding her as unworthy of his son, in
view of the fact that his son's mother considered her a person of such
importance that she used the transcontinen