"Best woman driver I ever saw," was the senator's praiseful rejoinder. "Nothing feazes that little girl, and I'm telling you that she can turn the wheels just about as fast as you want to ride." This was a new aspect of Miss Anners, even to one who knew her as well as Blount thought he knew her, and, lover-like, he found a grain of encouragement in it. Patricia had never cared for the out-of-door things save as they bore upon the hygienic condition of the poor in the great cities. If she had changed in one respect, she might change in another. "I'm glad to know that," he commented. "She was needing an outlet on that side. There is a good bit of the Puritan in her--all work and no play, you know." The senator looked out from beneath his shaggy eyebrows. "Speaking of work; they're working you pretty hard these days, aren't they, son? If you belonged to my generation instead of your own, you wouldn't be cold-shouldering that young woman out yonder at Wartrace the way you do; not for all the politics that were ever hatched." "I have my work to do, and Patricia Anners would be the last person in the world to put obstacles in the way of it," returned the son gravely. Then he added: "I wish I could say as much for other people." The boss shot another keen glance across the table. "Somebody been trying to block you, Evan, boy?" he asked. Blount met the gaze of the shrewd gray eyes without flinching. "I don't know of any good reason why we shouldn't be entirely frank with each other, dad," he said, using for the first time since his return to the homeland the old boyhood father-name. "You know, better than any one else, I think, what the stumbling-blocks are, and who is putting them in my way." "Maybe so; maybe I do," was the even-toned answer. "It happens so, once in a while, that I know a heap of things I can't tell, son." Then: "Has McVickar been calling you down?" "No one has called me down. But some one, or something, is keeping me out of the real fight. I don't mean that I'm not doing what I set out to do: I've got my own particular abomination by the neck, and I'm about to choke the life out of it. But that is, as you might say, a side issue. The real struggle is going on all around me, but I'm not in it or of it. Everywhere I go there is the same cut-and-dried welcome, the same predetermined enthusiasm. Sometimes it seems as if all the people I meet have been instructed to make things pleasant and easy for me." The senator's chuckle was barely audible. "Seems as if I wouldn't find fault with that, if I were you, son," he suggested. "You are like the boy who has found a good piece of skating over a sheet of fine, smooth ice, and takes to complaining because it won't break and let him down into the cold water. You'll get enough of the real thing by and by."