"What's atrociously?" he asked.
"I don't see Brent," Miss Liz raised her lorgnette. "Is he ill?"
"No, my dear," the Colonel answered, "he is otherwise engaged and cannot be with us."
"John," the good woman stared severely across at him, "I believe that boy is working too hard! You must prevail upon him to take more rest."
A bomb exploding could scarcely have produced more surprise, yet one could never know just at what point Miss Liz would "break out"—as Zack called it. In the midst of their spellbound silence Ann giggled, and Jane managed to say:
"That would be rather difficult, wouldn't it, Miss Liz?—I mean, persuading him to take more rest?"
"Well, your father must try," she insisted; for, when very much in earnest, Miss Liz impartially denoted the Colonel as father to whomsoever she might be speaking.
"He's makin' a railroad, ain't he?" Dale turned to Ann. "Do ye reckon he'll show me how?"
"He'll turn it all over to you, no doubt!—he'll have to turn it over to someone if it gets built! It only shows, Daddy," she laughed across to the Colonel, "that one can't serve a corporation and a goddess both at the same time! Isn't that a natty little epigram?"
"I don't follow the subject of your epigram," the Colonel smiled.