down, by some homely metaphor, to the comprehension of this adorable little coquette, who tried with so many childish arts to dazzle and ensnare him. Even at thirteen she was learning the value of drawing out a man about himself; she was quite willing to understand the Interstate Commerce Law, and become pink and indignant over a new classification of "Coal at the pit's mouth"--if it meant her father would hold her a little tighter, and give her one of those sudden glances of approval.

Such intercourse with a shrewd, strong, brilliant mind--to a child naturally precocious and adaptive--could not fail to have far-reaching consequences on her development. She caught something of her father's independence; of his lofty and yet indulgent outlook on a universe made up so largely of fools and knaves; learned the greatest and rarest of all imaginative processes--to put oneself in the other fellow's shoes. When Joe Howard turned traitor at the state legislature, and sold out the K. B. and O. on the new mileage bill, her wrath at his duplicity rose to fever. "Well, there's his side to it," said Mr. Ladd, with unexpected serenity. "He hasn't a cent; he's mortgaged up to the ears; and has a sick daughter dying of consumption. He's a well-meaning man, and I suppose would be honest if he could. But if I were in his place, and your life was at stake, and the doctor ordered you to some ten-dollar-a-minute place in Colorado or somewhere, I guess I'd sell out the K. B. and O. too!"

And for that he got a hug that nearly choked him.

"Money and love, my lamb," he said to her once, "those are the wheels the old wagon runs on. Miss Simpkins will fluff you up with a whole lot of fancy fixings--but I tell you, it boils right down to that."

"Papa," she asked him on another occasion, with round wondering eyes, "if it's all like that, why are you honorable and noble and splendid?"

"I don't know," he answered, smiling. "I guess it's pride more than anything else. Theoretically the man with the fewest scruples gets farthest in the race; but thank the Lord, most of us are handicapped with some good qualities that stick to us like poor relations."

"But Miss Simpkins says that anybody who is bad gets punished for it sooner or later. She says that was why her brother-in-law's house burned down; because he was so uncharitable."

"It may be so with the people Miss Simpkins is acquainted with," said Mr. Ladd, "but it doesn't hold in the railroad business, nor anywhere else that I have seen, and I can't help thinking she's a trifle more hopeful than the traffic can bear!"

This philosophy, so picturesquely expressed, so genial, so amiably cynical, was not perhaps the best training for an unusually impressionable mind. Miss Simpkins learned to dread Phyllis' preface: "But Papa says--" What Papa said was often a bombshell that blew shams to pieces; tore down the pretty pink scenery of conventional illusions; and drove cobble-stones through the gauze that separated Miss Simpkins and her kind from the real world beyond. It was a harsh process, and bad for gauze.

At first, not knowing how else to maintain a fairly large establishment, Mr. Ladd had sought the services of a "managing housekeeper." But the trouble with her--or rather with them, for he had a succession--was that the "managing" was considerably overdone. They were discharged, the one after the other, without having "managed" to achieve their one consuming ambition, which was to capture the rich widower, and lead him to the altar. After a while, growing weary of being hunted, and altogether at his wits' end, he invited his unmarried sister, Henrietta Ladd, to take the foot of his table, and a place at his hearth.

She was a thin, plain, elderly woman, with a very low voice and a deceptive appearance of meekness. The casual guest at Mr. Ladd's board might have taken her for a silent saint, who, unwillingly sojourning in this vale of tears, was waiting with ladylike impatience for a heavenly crown. In some ways this description would have fitted Aunt Henrietta well enough, though it took no account of a perverse and interfering nature that was more than trying to live with. The silent saint attempted to rule her brother and her niece with a rod of iron, and so far succeeded that her two years "tenure of the gubernatorial chair" (as Mr. Ladd bitterly called it), was fraught with quarrels and unhappiness. Her tyranny, like all tyrannies, ended in a revolution. Mr. Ladd brought his "unmarried misery"--also his own phrase--to a sharp conclusion, and Henrietta departed with a large check and a still larger ill-will.

"Phyllis," he said, "I guess we'll just have to rustle along by our poor little selves. The people who take charge of us seem to take charge too hard. They mean well, but why should they stamp on us?--Yes, let's try it ourselves."

And Phyllis, not quite fifteen years old, became the acknowledged mistress of the big house.

In her demure head she knew that to fail would be to incur a danger that was almost too terrible to contemplate. Her father might be persuaded into marrying again, and the thought of such a catastrophe sobered and restrained her. She was on her mettle, and was determined to succeed. She had her check-book, her desk, her receipted bills. She had her morning interviews with the cook; sent curtains to the cleaners; rang up various tradespeople on the telephone; gently criticized Mary's window-cleaning, and George's nails, and busied herself with these, and innumerable other little cares, while Miss Simpkins waited in the study, restlessly drumming her long, lean fingers on a French grammar.

Of course, she did several foolish, impulsive things, but no more than some little bride might have done in the first novelty of controlling a large household. She gave a tramp one of her father's best suits of clothes; she was prevailed upon by the servants to buy many things that neither they nor anybody else could possibly need--including an electrically driven knife-cleaner, and a cook's table, so compact and ingenious, that it would have been priceless on an airship, though in her own spacious kitchen it was decidedly out of place; and it took her several months to discover that James was apparently feeding five elephants instead of five horses.

But she was quick to learn better; and with the innate capacity she inherited from her father, she soon had everything running on oiled wheels. And all this, if you please, at fifteen, with quite a bit of stocking between her dress and her trimly-shod feet.

It was seldom that her father ever ventured into the realm of criticism; but once or twice, in his smiling, easy-going way, he gently pulled her up.

"I don't know much about these things," he remarked once, "but don't there seem to be a lot of new dresses in this family?"

"One can't go naked, Papa."

"Admitting that, my dear, which with people of our position would certainly give rise to comment--couldn't we compromise on--well--going half-naked, and perhaps show a more Spartan spirit, besides, in regard to our hats?"

Phyllis' eyes filled with tears; and flushing with shame, she pressed her hot cheek against the back of the chair she was sitting in, and felt herself the most miserable, disgraced, unworthy little creature in the whole world.

Mr. Ladd's voice deepened, as it always did when he was moved.

"My darling," he