But before that dream-flower blossomed, she asked Hamer whether he really meant to back Harriet’s Attempt. She was curled on the hearth at his knee, with her mother nodding asleep at one side, and Wiggie’s overbright eyes on the other. Hamer took his cigar from his mouth, and pressed her head against him before replying. “I’ll let it lie till morning,” he said thoughtfully, “and then, if it doesn’t seem too much of a forlorn hope, I’ll run over and set her going. She won’t need overmuch persuasion! I’m new, of course, but I can do a bit of talking and getting folks interested. _She’s_ well enough known, and there’s a good many that think a lot of her judgment. They’ll laugh, at first, but I shouldn’t wonder if she went through, and I don’t mind laying that they’ll find her pretty useful. She’s not the ordinary woman. She looks at things like a man, and she’s get-up-and-git enough to run a train. She wants more outlet, too, and Fate owes her more than a bit for that halma-board of a father, especially as all the elections in the kingdom will never get her the one big thing----” He stopped abruptly. Wiggie was looking at him. “Tramming again, old dear?” Dandy put up her hand to meet his. “It’s rather a dangerous experiment, playing Providence in your wholesale fashion. And what do _you_ know about Harriet’s ‘one big thing’?” “I was only talking. Probably I’m right out of it, but one just wonders. Hadn’t you and Mother better be getting off to bed?” But when they had taken his advice, and Wigmore had closed the door behind them, Hamer got up slowly and knocked his ash into the fire, a sorrowful expression on his handsome face. “Some have Paradise and some Elections,” he said, not looking at Wiggie, collapsed now like a tired child in his chair. “And the others--what have the others got, Cyril, my boy?” “Dead candles and a tune in the throat!” Wiggie answered, with closed eyes, and began to croon-- “Ma chandelle est morte, Je n’ai plus de feu.” Good Hamer sighed. CHAPTER XVIII HAMER’S SECOND TRAM