Closing his eyes, he could see the great shoe factory, as plainly as though it were there before him, the neatly fenced enclosure and the path by which the small army of employees came and went every day. There was the office, a one-story building painted white, that stood near the gate. He looked into the front room, and there, on high stools, writing in great ledgers, sat his father's clerks, an old man and four younger ones. And in the little private office was his father. There he sat tilted back in his swing-chair, a young appearing man, cheerful, prosperous, shrewd; not an educated man, but his son's most intimate companion. Curtis laughed as he thought of the "Trilby Club" of which his father was president. They made Welsh Rabbits, played penny ante and sang rollicking songs. There was a club house where they met in summer and ate fish dinners. Then his mind reverted to Panayota. He always saw her in thought with a jug upon her shoulder, standing on the edge of a precipice. "I wonder what the governor will think of Panayota?" he muttered. His father was the high priest of common sense in the Curtis household. From infancy he had respected his father's judgment and feared his good-natured ridicule. John Curtis had been brought up as an exemplification of the motto, "My son will never make a fool of himself," and, so far, he had been the pride of his father's heart. "Come to dress Panayota in European costume," he mused, "and she would make a sensation in America. But lord, wouldn't she be queer! She's grand here in her native mountains, but you can't lug a mountain around with a girl. It would take about four years of education to fit her for Boston, or even for Lynn. I wonder if she'd give up crossing herself. My mother would have seven kinds of fits if she ever saw the girl cross herself." Mrs. Curtis represented the religious responsibilities of the family. A tall, angular, bespectacled New England woman, brought up strictly in the Presbyterian faith, she regarded all foreigners as heathen, pining to be converted to the doctrine of infant damnation; and a taint of papacy was to her as a taint of leprosy. That this woman had eloped with William Curtis when he was a penniless drummer for a shoe house, was no indication that she would countenance similar conduct in her son. "If I could manage in some way to have Panayota educated for a couple of years," he mused, "and then bring mother and the governor over here to see her--they've long been talking about taking a trip abroad. The first thing is to get her away from Kostakes." But here a thought occurred to him of a more serious nature than any that had yet passed through his mind in connection with Panayota. "I wonder if Americans wouldn't look askance at a woman who had lived in a Turkish harem? Wouldn't she bring a taint of suspicion with her, no matter how pure she might be? Of course, if I caught anybody--"