“I don’t know,” he said in a deliberate voice, in which Junior instantly detected the strain of effort at self-control, “that you’ve anything to tell me, Junior. I’ve known that you liked Mahala Spellman all your life. I even made it my business to get on the other side of that oleander screen last night and hear what the young lady had to say. I’m right here to tell you that if you want her, you needn’t pay the slightest attention to what she says. She’ll find before she gets through with it, she hasn’t got the say.” Junior studied his father in amazement. “I don’t understand,” he said. Martin Moreland leaned back in his chair. With each word he uttered he brought the point of a pencil he was holding, down on the sheet of paper before him with a deliberate little tap that accented and clipped off each word with a finality and a certainty that were most reassuring. “I don’t know,” said the elder Moreland deliberately, “that I’ve made such a very good job of being your father. Your mother thinks not; but I have tried, Junior, with all my might. You should give me credit for that. Ten years ago I began to figure that to-day would come. At the same time, I began to plan how to get the whip hand. Let me tell you without any frills that I’ve got it. You can stake your sweet life that I’ve _got_ it!” Junior crossed the room and sat down upon the arm of his father’s chair. He ran his hands through his hair, and bending over, kissed him. “I haven’t a notion what you mean, Dad,” he said, “but you’re the greatest man in all the world. You’ve always been away too good to me, but some of these days I’m going to show you that it hasn’t been wasted. You may go and travel clear around the world, if you want to, and I’ll run this business, and you’ll find when you get back that you haven’t lost a dollar and you’ve made a good many. I’ve been watching the way you play the game all my life. You bet I can play up to you! But this girl matter is another question. I don’t see how you’re going to make Mahala change her mind if she doesn’t like me and doesn’t want me.” “You poor ninny!” said Martin Moreland scornfully. “Can you look in your glass and tell yourself truthfully that there is such a thing as a girl that doesn’t want as handsome a young fellow as you are? Of course she wants you. But you’ve heard of chariot wheels, haven’t you? They’re an obsession that all women get in the backs of their heads. About Mahala’s period in their career every one of them wants to think of herself as riding in a chariot at the wheels of which she is dragging—the more supine lovers the better. There’s no such thing as getting the number too large. At the present minute, according to Miss Mahala, she has got you under her chariot wheels; she wants you to kneel and to cringe and to beg and to let her feel her power.” “I wonder now,” said Junior. “Of course, if that is what she wants——”