“I’ll compromise with you, Eugenia! You read it, and I’ll listen!” He propped himself up on an elbow. “It’s a long time since you’ve read aloud to me, isn’t it, Eugenia? Remember how I used to want the ‘Swiss Family Robinson’ twice a year? And ‘Pontiac, Chief of the Ottawas,’ and ‘Thro’ Swamp and Glade,’ and ‘The Prince and the Pauper’? You wouldn’t read Frank Merriwell to me--‘_Blooey, blooey, and eight more redskins bit the dust!_’--and I always rather held it against you,” he smiled at her cozily. “Now, you go right ahead and get this off your mind, Madame President! Shoot!” Mrs. Parker sat down again, stiffly, on the edge of her chair. “Peter, will you never grow up?” “Certainly. I did. I am. There are those who consider me entirely mature. For example, the very determined young lady from Arizona who endeavored to espouse me at Del Monte last month, and the----” “Peter, _please_!” The consuming terror of her life was that her only son would make a thoroughly unsuitable marriage and he was quite well aware of her anxiety on the subject. “Well, what do you suppose it _is_, Eugenia? _What_ is the secret of my fatal attraction? If I didn’t take Takasugi with me, there are times when I should be actually overpowered.... You wouldn’t say, would you,” he flung back the bright blue spread and sat up in his bright blue pajamas, his fair hair mussed, his arms about his knees, “that I am the caveman type, popularly supposed to be irresistible? It must be my girlish laughter. But to return--I have no objection, I never had, to growing up, a process which carries with it many pleasant prerogatives. But I will not--I will never, and it is useless for you to plead with me and importune me, Eugenia, grow old. Madame President, consider the bleakness of it!” He shivered and dove under his covers again. “Eugenia, I tell you frankly, I’m in a Peter Panic about growing old!” CHAPTER XIII _Mr. Peter Parker of Pasadena, visiting his mill for the first time, receives the right hand of fellowship and the cold shoulder in the space of an hour._ IT was something less than a fortnight later that there was trouble with the power at the Altonia on a hectic day of high pressured rush. The machinery jerked itself to a standstill, like a faulty mechanical toy, and Gloriana-Virginia, waiting only to be certain that her frame was actually still, squatted thankfully in a corner and bent over her book, a sallow forefinger tracing the words laboriously, her lips moving in a blissful murmur. Glen, hurrying through the spinning room with a message from Manders, stopped as always for a word. “Well, Glory--you’re in luck, anyway!” She leaned down to whisper. “We hope the old power will stay off, don’t we?” “Yes, me’um,” the child returned, gratefully. “I sho’ do crave readin’ fairy tales’ stories!” “But you’ve read that book ten times over, Glory! I must bring you another one.”