“You know, well enough,” she returned coldly. “For a time, I think, Mr. Plegg was able to keep the crooked things hidden from David--as you doubtless instructed him to. But of course David soon found out what is being done, and that it is being done by your orders. And now you are about to make a criminal of him. I don’t see how you can ever look his father in the face.” Eben Grillage wagged his big head sorrowfully. “You’re all I’ve got in the world, Vinnie, girl, and there’s mighty little I wouldn’t do for you; but it’s terribly hard to live up to your notions, sometimes. You’ve been a business man’s daughter all your life, and yet you haven’t the faintest idea of what business means.” “I have a very clear idea of what it means to cheat, to lie, to put human life in jeopardy, and to take a clean, straightforward young man like David Vallory and turn him into a potential murderer.” “Oh, pshaw!” grunted the king of the contractors. “I suppose somebody has been scaring you about that tunnel and the few cracks it has in the roof. Was it David?” “No, it wasn’t David; I found out about it myself, before you went away. And the ‘few cracks’ have nearly killed one man, already.” “Strayer, you mean?--I had David’s report of that. Strayer is a pretty good engineer, and he ought to have known better than to pry a rock loose and let it fall on his own head. Vinnie, I’m getting sore about this thing. That tunnel roof will stand up all right if they’ll only quit monkeying with it and let it alone.” “I’m not here to argue with you about the tunnel as a tunnel,” said the daughter, with a touch of the true Grillage bluntness. “I merely wish to find out if you’re going to try to patch up that broken promise.” “What in the name of common sense can I do--more than I have done? I wrote Plegg to keep David on the windward side of the little economies we have to make, and I’m sorry if he hasn’t been able to do it. I’ll haul Plegg over the coals, if that will make you feel any better.” “Mr. Plegg doubtless did his best, and it wasn’t good enough. David is a graduate engineer and a grown man. He would be singularly stupid if he could be your chief of construction and not know what was going on right under his eyes. But that is not the point now. Are you, or are you not, going to give David authority to do what he, and Mr. Plegg, and every member of your own engineering staff, know ought to be done to that dangerous place in the tunnel--a thing that is endangering the lives of the men every day? That is what I came to ask.” It was a rare thing for Eben Grillage to refuse his daughter’s demands, even when they were unreasonable; but the habits of a ruthless life-time were too strong to be set aside, even at the bidding of indulgent fatherly affection.