“I’m not going to marry anybody until I’m asked,” exclaimed Lucia, springing from the bed, wringing her hands, and pacing the floor; “and nobody has asked me yet; I don’t know that anybody ever will. And I’m perfectly miserable; if you say another word to me about it I shall go into hysterics. Nobody ever heard anything but good of Phil Hayn, either here or anywhere else, and if he loves me I’m proud of it, and I’m going to love him back all I like, even if I have to break my heart afterward. He shan’t know how I feel, you may rest assured of that. But oh, Margie, it’s just too dreadful. Mamma has picked out Mr. Marge for me,--who could love such a stick?--and she’ll be perfectly crazy if I marry any one else, unless perhaps it’s some one with a great deal more money. I wonder if ever a poor girl was in such a perfectly horrible position?” Margie did not know, so both girls sought consolation in the ever-healing fount of maidenhood,--a good long cry. CHAPTER XII. IRON LOOKS UP. The truth of the old saying regarding the reluctance of watched pots to boil is proved as well in business as elsewhere, as Edgar Tramlay and a number of other men in the iron trade had for some time been learning to their sorrow. Few of them were making any money; most of them were losing on interest account, closed mills, or stock on hand that could not find purchasers. To know this was uncomfortable; to know that the remainder of the business world knew it also was worse: there is a sense of humiliation in merely holding one’s own for a long period which is infinitely more provoking and depressing to a business-man than an absolute failure or assignment. How closely every one in Tramlay’s business circle watched the iron-market! There was not an industry in the world in the least degree dependent upon iron which they did not also watch closely and deduce apparent probabilities which they exchanged with one another. The proceedings of Congress, the results of elections, the political movements abroad that tended to either peace or war, became interesting solely through their possible influence upon the iron trade. Again and again they were sure that the active and upward movement was to begin at once; the opening of a long-closed mill to execute a small order, even a longer interval than usual between the closings of mills, was enough to lift up their collective hearts for a while. Then all would become faint-hearted again when they realized that they, like Hosea Biglow’s chanticleer, had been “Mistakin’ moonrise for the break o’ day.”