"I guess I lose if I have to answer that question now," he admitted, frankly; "but you keep your eye on Willie and the push-ball, and watch the professor change him into a big roaring captain of industry. Then you shall talk business with him as much as you like, and he won't make you feel that he's laughing at you, as that Mr.--, what's his name, does." "Good for you, Allen!" the girl cried, really pleased by the clumsily expressed compliment. "So all is settled now except the pater, and I'm almost launched on my career," Allen replied. "Now suppose we take up your case. What have you been doing all these years?" "Well," said Alice, smiling, "the history of my life is yet to be written, but the main facts up to the present are that I have safely passed through school and most of my other childhood diseases; that I had my coming-out ball in New York last winter; that I am happy, and--most important of all--that I have Eleanor." She took Mrs. Gorham's hand affectionately in hers as she spoke, and Allen needed nothing more to demonstrate the strength of the bond which existed between the two. It was not the affection between mother and daughters, or between sisters, or friends, but rather the best of all three merged and purified by the yearning each had felt for that which now each had found. The conversation during the ride back to the hotel was in lighter vein, in which Allen showed greater proficiency. Alice's interest in him was mingled with a disappointment that the years had not made him older and less irresponsible. She felt herself distinctly his senior, yet she also felt a confidence in his unexpressed ability. To Mrs. Gorham the passages-at-arms between the two children, as she would have called them, were refreshing. She knew that each was being benefited by coming in contact with a different nature. Alice's serious side needed the leaven of a lighter viewpoint on life; Allen's buoyancy was already being tempered by her ambition. This was why, when Alice asked her later, in their apartment, "Don't you think Allen needs a little of that 'inspiration' you spoke of?" she had kissed the girl, and answered without hesitation, "Yes, dear; and you are just the one to give it to him." "Then this is my chance to enter business by proxy?" Alice asked again; and Mrs. Gorham, smiling quietly to herself, had answered, "Perhaps." IV After his interview with Senator Kenmore, Gorham walked rapidly down the slight incline from the Senators' office building to the hotel, where the clerk passed out to him a handful of letters and telegrams. In the lobby, unseasonably crowded by the extra session of Congress, he nodded cordially to three or four men who obviously courted recognition, and ascended in the elevator to his apartment.