Edna watched her father as he unlocked one after another of the compartments and apparently rearranged his papers. There was always about his actions a certain well-defined purpose, but the girl could not help noticing that now he appeared irresolute and wavering. He seemed to be marking time rather than making progress with any definite work. She wondered if the coming strike was worrying him more than he had been willing to admit. She wished to help, but knew that nothing would be more acceptable to him than simply leaving him alone. She also knew that when her father said he would be ready to go home with her at a certain hour he usually was ready when that hour came. Why, then, did he delay his departure? At last Sartwell closed down the lid of one desk and locked it as if he were shutting in his wavering purpose, then he placed the key from his watch-guard in the third lock and threw back the cover. An electric light dangling by a cord from the ceiling, threw down into the desk rays reflected by a circular opal shade that covered the lamp. The manager gazed for a few moments into the desk, then turning to his daughter, said: “Edna, you startled me when you came in tonight.” “I am very sorry, father. Didn’t you expect me?” “Yes, but not at that moment, as it happened. You are growing very like your mother, my girl.” There was a pause, Edna not knowing what to say. Her father seldom spoke of his dead wife, and Edna could not remember her mother. “Somehow I did not realize until to-night--that you were growing up. You have always been my baby to me. Then--suddenly--you came in. Edna, she was only four years older than you when she died. You see, my dear, although I grow older, she always remains young--but I sometimes think that the young man who was her husband is dead too, for there is not much likeness to him in me.” Sartwell had been drumming lightly with his fingers on the desk top as he spoke; now he reached up and turned off the electric light as if its brilliancy troubled him. The lamp in the centre of the room was sufficient, and it left him in the shadow. “I suppose there comes a time in the life of every father, when he learns, with something of a shock, that the little girl who has been playing about his knee is a young woman. It is like when a man hears himself alluded to as old for the first time. I well remember how it made me catch my breath when I first heard myself spoken of as an old man.” “But you are not old,” cried the girl, with a little indignant half sob in her voice. She wished to go to her father and put her arms around his neck, but she felt intuitively that he desired her to stay where she was until he finished what he had to say.