He patted her soothingly. “There, there, Lady-bird, Lady-bug! Now, now! Of course her old daddy understands! It was just that you didn’t stop to think, that’s all!” “I didn’t--stop--to think,” sobbed Nancy Carey. They liked young Peter Parker from Pasadena, his senior partner and his senior partner’s daughter, and all their guests. They found him so amazingly juvenile and so merry and amiable and so intriguingly different from any one they had ever known. “Cousin Mary-Lou,” who was the eighteen months’ widow of gallant Bob Lee Tenafee who had died a gentleman’s clean and speedy death in the hunting field, decided to give a house-party for him at her plantation, “Beulah-land.” Her Cousin ’Gene had dropped a hint in her ear, and Mary-Lou moved swiftly. “You surely don’t want to prowl around that stuffy old mill for more than a day, Peter Parker,” she said in her soft, caressing voice, dropping her _r_’s in the authentic manner poor Effie Darrow had adored. “I do not,” he agreed gratefully. “I came at the earnest request of my earnest parent, and after an earnest once over, I shall exit merrily.” “Then shall we say to-morrow? Can you all come in time for dinner to-morrow?” the young widow gathered up the other diners in her brown and velvety gaze. “Oh ... not to-morrow, please!” The guest was deprecatory. “I couldn’t stall Eugenia off with one day, you know!” “Eugenia?” “My female parent--Madame President, of the Federated Clubs. Surely you’ve heard of Eugenia? An excellent person in her way--” he turned gravely to his shocked host, “and I feel for her an esteem bordering upon affection, but she has the fatal defect of superseriousness. Some one from here very thoughtfully mailed me a marked copy of a jolly little paper called _The Torch_ and----” “_The Torch?_” Old Mr. Carey laid down his knife and fork and the choleric flush flooded his convalescent pallor. “Confound them, sir, the greasy----” “Dad, _dear_,” Nancy warned him softly, “you’re not to get excited!” “Miserable, beetle-browed, chicken-livered scum of the earth! Wish to the Lord we didn’t need ’em so desperately! I wouldn’t have a one on the premises! They’re always holding their meetings in dark alleys and plotting and planning, and upsetting the hands. And they dared to send you-- Was it the one with a scurrilous article on yourself, my boy?” Peter nodded. “The very same little valentine!” “Cousin ’Gene,” Bob Lee Tenafee’s widow wanted to know, very seriously, “are you going to let a thing like that go unpunished? I think it’s abominable.” The old gentleman brought his good fist down on the table with a resounding thump. “No, Mary-Lou, no, by the eternal! I’m going to run that rascal down if I have to get a detective from New York! I’ll show ’em that they can’t act like Russia in America! I’ll----” “Oh, please,” said his young partner winningly, “don’t cheat me out of the fun of doing that for myself!” “What do you mean, sir?”