ur. "I certainly
shouldn't wish to be dependent upon her."

"Then, your notion of marrying is that people get married for a
living, for luxury. I suppose you'd expect her to leave you if you
lost your money?"

"That's different," said Arthur, restraining the impulse to reason with
his illogical father whose antiquated sentimentalism was as unfitted to
the new conditions of American life as were his ideas about work.

"You see, Hiram," said Mrs. Whitney, good-humoredly, "your children
outvote you."

The master workman brought his fist down on the arm of his chair--not a
gesture of violence, but of dignity and power. "I don't stand for the
notion that marriage is living in luxury and lolling in carriages and
showing off before strangers. I told you what my last word was, Matilda."

Mrs. Whitney debated with herself full half a minute before she
spoke. In a tone that betrayed her all but departed hope of changing
him, she said: "It is a great shock to me to have you even pretend to
be so heartless--to talk of breaking these young people's hearts--just
for a notion."

"It's better to break their hearts before marriage," replied Hiram, "than
to let them break their lives, and their hearts, too, on such marriages.
The girl that wants my son only if he has money to enable her to make a
fool of herself, ain't fit to be a wife--and a mother. As for Del and
Ross--The man that looks at what a woman _has_ will never look at what
she _is_--and my daughter's well rid of him."

A painful silence, then Mrs. Whitney rose. "If I hadn't suspected, Hiram,
that you intended to cheat your children out of their rights in order to
get a reputation as a philanthropist, I'd not have brought this matter up
at this time. I see my instincts didn't mislead me. But I don't give up
hope. I've known you too many years, Hiram Ranger, not to know that your
heart is in the right place. And, after you think it over, you will give
up this wicked--yes, wicked--plan old Doctor Hargrave has taken advantage
of your sickness to wheedle you into."

Hiram, his face and hands like yellow wax, made no answer. Arthur and
Adelaide followed Mrs. Whitney from the room. "Thank you, Mrs. Whitney,"
said Arthur, gratefully, when they were out of his father's hearing. "I
don't know what has come over him of late. He has gone back to his
childhood and under the spell of the ideas that seemed, and no doubt
were, right then. I believe you have set him to thinking. He's