"Your father—a railroad contractor?" answers Harry, opening his eyes, which appear to the young lady very large, earnest, and flashing compared to the rather effeminate ones of Mr. Livingston.
"Not in New York," laughs Ollie, waving his white hands. "When here, Mr. Travenion is one of our leading fashionables. Did you see any one dance more gracefully than your father did last winter, Miss Erma?—though I believe he did have something to do with the building of the railway out there."
"I don't see how that was possible," suggests Lawrence. "I and my assistants figured all the cross-sectionings of that portion of the work, and I know that none were accredited to Ralph Travenion. Our largest contractors were Little & Co., Tranyon & Co., Amos Jennings, George H. Smith, and Brigham Young—nearly all Mormons."
"You are sure?" says the young lady, knitting her brows as if in thought.
"Certainly!"
"This is very curious. Why, I have even had letters from him on Union Pacific paper."
"Perhaps he was a silent partner in one of the companies," suggests Lawrence, who is very much astonished to find a girl in New York's most exclusive set, as Miss Travenion evidently is, connected so intimately with one of the builders of a railway in the Far West.
"Perhaps you are right," says the young lady contemplatively. "However, I will know all about it myself in a few weeks."
"He is coming to visit you, I presume?"
"No, but I am going to take a trip to California with Mrs. Livingston and her party," remarks Erma, "and en route I expect to meet him—my dear father, whom I haven't seen for half a year!" and the girl's eyes light up with sudden tenderness and pleasure. "Apropos of the trip—excuse me." Here she rises suddenly and passes to the family lawyer.