“It will not be a bad plan at all if ye think anything of my opinion,” said the ironmaster. “I’m but new in my place myself, a matter of two or three years. And one of the first things I did was to give a ball. It was a very popular thing--we just got in everybody. The young folk, who are very important, who just give you a great lift in reconciling a place where they are pleased, and the mothers that come with them, and all the intermediate ones that are neither young nor old, that are hanging at a loose thread. If your house is a good size, you can ask anybody; and this is a very fair size,” said the other rich man, looking condescendingly round the drawing-room, which was certainly not so immense as his great new-built castle down the Clyde. “Oh, it’s big enough,” said Rowland, a little wounded in his feelings. To compare Rosmore to any bran new house with fictitious battlements and towers, was at once a brutality and a bad joke. “We will get in a good number here,” he said, looking round him complacently, “and as we have nothing but Eastern carpets, there will be the less trouble. Well, my dear, that is settled. I am not such a stern parent as I get the credit of being, and the bairns shall have their will.” “I told you I could make her do it,” said Eddy to Marion behind the shelter of the book of pictures which she had taken up again. “It was neither you nor her that did it,” said Marion: “it was papa.” “It was because she put it to him so cleverly. You will see Mrs. Rowland will always follow my lead. She can’t forget that I am my father’s son.” “Will you tell me that story?” said Marion, whose curiosity he had raised and allowed to drop a dozen times. “Some time or other,” said Eddy. “I like to keep you on the tenter hooks. You look prettier than ever when you have a fit of curiosity which makes your eyes shine. Do you know your eyes give out sparks when you look at me like that?” “Like a cat?” said Marion, “that is no compliment.” “Yes, just like a cat, torturing the poor little mouse that she has fascinated with her big shining eyes.” He opened his own eyes wide with a threatening movement of his hand, at which they both laughed. “Before she devours him, she tortures him,” he said. Which was it? he or she? But poor little Marion had not the faintest idea that she was in the way of being devoured. She did not require very fine methods; but accepted the compliments and the badinage in her simplicity. It amused her extremely to “tease” him, as she thought, to make little rude speeches and show her innocent power. After all it was innocent enough, and artless, if without much delicacy or dignity. So much meaning as was in it was all on Eddy’s side.