"Isn't your eternal drinking bad enough without your asking such as that to drink with you?" she asked quietly. Very, very quietly for Miss Terry Temple. Her father shifted a trifle uneasily. Blenham watched her intently, admiringly after a gross fashion and yet a bit contemptuously. Blenham could put a look like that into his eye; to him a girl was a thing that might be both sneered at and coveted. "My dear," said Temple, striving for clear enunciation and in the end achieving it heavily, "I am glad you came. I want you to listen. We must act wisely. We must not misjudge Mr. Blenham." While Terry remained silent, looking from one to the other of the two men. Temple drank his whiskey hastily, furtively, snatching the second when her gaze had gone to Blenham. "What's the game?" asked Terry in a moment. She set her books down upon the table at her side, put out her hand to the back of a chair, and like the men remained standing. Temple looked to Blenham, who merely shrugged his thick shoulders and sipped at his whiskey, as though it had been a light wine and very soft to an appreciative palate. In some vague way the act was vastly insolent. Temple appeared uncertain, no uncommon thing with him; then, going to set his emptied glass down he put an elbow on the mantel, dropped his head, and spoke in a low, mumbling voice: "The game? It's what it always was, Terry girl; what it always will be. The game of the ear of corn and the millstones; the game of the unfortunate under the iron heel." "Unfortunate!" cried Terry in disgust. "Pooh!" "Listen to me," commanded her father. "You ask: What's the game? and I'm telling you." His head was up now; Terry noted a new look in his eyes, as he hurried on. "It's just the game of life, after all. The war of those who have everything against those who have nothing; of men like Old Hell-Fire Packard against men like me. A game to be won more often than not through the sheer force of massed money that squeezes the life out of the under dog--but to be lost when the moneyed fool, curse him, runs up against a team like Blenham and me!" "Blenham and you?" she repeated. "You and Blenham? You mean to tell me that you are chipping in with him?" Blenham turned his whiskey-glass slowly in his great thick fingers. His eye shone with its crafty light; his lips were parted a little as though they held themselves in readiness for a swift interruption if Temple said the wrong thing or went too far. "You are prejudiced," said Temple. "You always have been. Just because Blenham here has represented Packard, and Packard----" "Is an old thief!" she cried passionately. "And worse! As Packard's _Man Friday_ Blenham doesn't exactly make a hit with me!" "Come, come," exclaimed Temple. "Curb your tongue, Teresa, my dear. If you will only listen----" "Shoot then and get it over."