"Yes--yes, child--I know it's hard work now--but 'y gory, Emmy, when I get this sprocket introduced and going, I'll buy you six superintendents in a brass cage and let you feed 'em biled eggs to make 'em sing--eh?" He smiled and patted his daughter's hair and rose to go back to work. The girl plucked at his coat and said: "Now sit down, father, I want to talk to you," she hesitated. "It's about Mr. Brotherton. You know he's been coming out here for years and I thought he was coming to see me, and now Martha thinks he comes to see her, and Martha always stays there and so does Ruth, and if he is coming to see me--" she stopped. Her father looked at her in astonishment. "Why, father," she went on,--"why not? I'm twenty-five, and Martha's twenty-two and even Ruth is seventeen--he might even be coming to see Ruth," she added bitterly. "Yes, or Epaminondas--the cat--eh?" cut in the old man. Then he added, indignantly, "Well, how about this singing Jasper Adams--who's he coming to see? Or Amos--he comes around here sometimes Saturday night after G. A. R. meeting, with me--what say? Would you want us all to clear out and leave you the front room with him?" demanded the perturbed Captain. Then the father put his arm about his child tenderly: "Twenty-five years old--twenty-five years--why, girl, in my time a girl was an old maid laid on the shelf at twenty-five--and here you are," he mused, "just thinking of your first beau and here I am needing your mother worse than I ever did in my life. Law-see' girl--how do I know what to do--what say?" But he did know enough to draw her to him and kiss her and sigh. "Well--maybe I can do something--maybe--we'll see." And then she left him and he went to his work. And as he worked the thought struck him suddenly that if he could put one of his sprockets in the Judge's automobile where he had seen a chain, that it would save power and stop much of the noise. So as he worked he dreamed that his sprocket was adopted by the makers of the new machines, and that he was rich--exceedingly rich and that he took the girls to visit the Ohio kin, and that Emma had her trip to the Grand Canyon, that Martha went to Europe and that Ruthie "took vocal" of a teacher in France whose name he could not pronounce. As he hammered away at his bench he heard a shuffling at the door and looking up saw Dr. Nesbit in the threshold. "Come in, Doctor; sit down and talk," shrilled the Doctor before the Captain could speak, and when the Doctor had seated himself upon the box by the workbench, the Captain managed to say: "Surely--come right in, I'm kind of lonesome anyhow." "And I'm mad," cried the Doctor. "Just let me sit here and blow off a little to my old army friend." "Well--well, Doctor, it's queer to see you hot under the collar--eh?" The Doctor began digging out his pipe and filling it, without speaking. The Captain asked: "What's gone wrong? Politics ain't biling? what say?"