But his daughter fluttered closer to him until she seemed fairly to melt against his breast. “This is my place, Dad, dear,” she murmured, lifting her mild and tender gaze. “And I’ve come to beg you not to be hard on Luke.... I know he’s made bad mistakes, but he’s sorry, and you _mustn’t_ be harsh, Dad, dear ... you _can’t_, because I love him ... because he’s my husband.” CHAPTER XXI _Once more, The Wishing Carpet justifies itself, and Henry Clay Bean breaks the solemnity of a lifetime._ MRS. BOB LEE took competent charge of the situation. Before dark she was making the rounds of the Tenafee clan with all its ramifications. Her color was high and her eyes very bright, and she held her head gallantly. “Now, Cousin Ada,” she said crisply, when she reached Glen Darrow’s house and marched briskly upstairs to the spinster’s room, “there isn’t a bit of use in taking it like this! You’re just making yourself sick, when we’ve got to hold up our chins and act like a Family!” (She seemed actually to sound the capital F.) Miss Ada was reclining on her bed with a cold compress on her forehead and she answered only with a shuddering moan. “Exactly,” said her connection. “That’s just how I feel, but it’s not the way I act, Cousin Ada.” She sat down wearily and pulled off her tight little persimmon-colored felt hat and ran her fingers through her bob. “_Lordy!_” she sighed gustily. “Been to all the tribes and kinnery, bucking them up, putting a face on the affair.” “But--Mary-Lou, how _can_ you? There isn’t any face to put on it,” Miss Ada wailed. “What is Cousin ’Gene going to _do_? Can’t he have the marriage annulled?” “Not without first slaying the dumb-bell, bird-headed blushing bride--which would be rather a good job, if you ask me.” “Mary-_Lou_!” “Well, it would! Sickening little fool!” “But what shall we say to people?” Mrs. Bob Lee made a grimace, kicked a little tufted hassock across the room and sank her voice to honeyed sweetness--“Isn’t it the most romantic thing you ever heard in all your born days? It positively sounds like a story--and it looks like a movie! That gorgeous young mountaineer, worshiping his employer’s daughter, hopelessly, of course, and our blessed little Nancy--she’s always been sort of different, don’t you know, from the run of modern girls, dreamy, idealistic--losing her heart-- No, he won’t stay on at the mill. Peter Parker, the junior partner, has a lot of innovations he wants to make, and Cousin ’Gene’s going to put the turtle-doves on ‘Evergreen,’ that big old plantation he took over ten years ago--remember? He’s always wanted to develop it, and it just works out beautifully. Yes, it _was_ a surprise, at the very last, though I had been suspecting for a long time----”