Something of his flaring enthusiasm heightened her reply. "You can't be serious! I'd as soon expect Auntie to be a convert!" Her mothering eyes searched his face anxiously. "You aren't teasing me?" "Indeed not! He's to speak at the state labor convention himself, in favor of proper mining regulations. It's great, Jane! I wouldn't have believed it of him!" Her mobile lips curved doubtfully. "For your sake, I hope you're right, Pelham. But--how can he? Why, boy, he's on the other side--he must be! How could he line up with our ideas, when it would take money out of his own pocket? Miracles don't happen, I'm afraid. I wish----" She sighed. There was something to admire, almost love, in his hearty zeal over the amazing convert; he was so boyish, so peltingly trustful! "_I_'m for it, remember. And I'm his son." Her unsympathetic unbelief widened his gaze. Her fingers brushed his arm in a fleet unspoken caress. "You're a good boy, Pelham. I haven't gotten over my wonder at you. But--you're pulling against him, in all of this, remember." "He's decent." Real pain spoke here; his own doubts of the father gave an obstinate tinge to his reception of her objections. A cynical sureness hardened the eyes for a moment. "Nobody's decent, when his pocket-book's affected." A merry laugh parted her lips. "How unfeeling you must find me! Let's pray I'm entirely wrong. Why not get a look at his speech, before he delivers it?" Incredulous, hope-against-hope eagerness flickered in her face. This Pelham at once agreed to do. There was some ground for Jane's hesitancy, he reflected; most men, given Paul's position, would have been permanently intractable. But his father, after all, was different. He could hardly let her go back for supper, although she had promised. A dizzying intemperance drove on his tongue. "I wish I could keep you, now that I have you here," and his eyes dwelt upon her alluring shapeliness; her gaze was intently busied with the panorama of uninspired villas. "You don't know what knowing you has meant to me, Jane. I was in the dumps over the whole business...." "It's mutual, Pelham. The iron city has chiefly solid iron headpieces, I think. You were a rare find." He chuckled. "You make the thing too intellectual, at that. I assure you that I wouldn't offer to elope with a suffrage tract, or a skirted treatise on socialism. My offer holds good, if you're willing." Playfully he increased the speed. "Lauderdale isn't Barkis," she temporized. "Have you known me four weeks, or five?" "So romance perishes, as the lady grows arithmetical! Love can't be weighed on the iceman's scales." "Nor can mental dynamite blast it out, Mr. Miner. Modern marriage isn't a thing to venture lightly. Love's blindness was once thought a blessing----" "It's often a mercy," he slipped in.