"What is it ?" "Why, your brother Jack just called you up from Meadow Brook, Sam, and wants to tell you something immediately," stammered Mr.Stevens, plucking at a beard which in that moment seemed to have lost all its aggressiveness.

"He called twice before you arrived, and is on the 'phone now." Sam, as he walked to the telephone, had time to find that his heart was beating a tattoo against his ribs, that his breath was short and fluttery, and that stage fright had suddenly crept over him and claimed him for its own; so it was with no great patience or understanding that he heard Jack tell him in great glee about some tests which Princeman had had made in his own paper mills with the marsh pulp, and how Princeman was sorry he had not taken more stock, and could not the treasury stock be opened for further subscription?
"Tell him no," said Sam shortly, and hung up the receiver; then he repented of his bluntness and spent five precious minutes in recalling his brother and apologizing for his bruskness, explaining that Princeman was probably trying to plan another attempt to pool the stock.
In the meantime Theophilus Stevens had stood surveying his daughter in contrition.
"I'm afraid I came in at a most inopportune moment," he said by way of apology.
"Yes, I'm afraid you did," she admitted with a smile.

"However, I don't think Sam will forget what he wanted to say," and suddenly she reached up and put her arms around her father's neck and drew his face down and kissed him rapturously.
"I'm glad to see you feel the way you do about it," said Mr.Stevens delightedly, petting her gently upon the shoulder with one hand and with the other smoothing back the hair from her forehead.

She was the dearest to him of all his children, although he never confessed it, even to himself, and just now they were very, very close together indeed.

"I'm glad to hear you call him Sam, too.