"Connie, you are perfectly incorrigible," said Myra severely. "With your poor people you are an angel of light, but with your friends"—
"I'm an angel of darkness. That's right, cuzzy dear; pile it on, I'm young and strong. Poppa, can't you think of something mean to say about me? Do try, please."
Bartrow grinned; and Elliott, who knew his daughter's vagaries and delighted in them, laughed outright. Constance made a face across the table at her cousin, and said, "Now talk mines, if you can."
"I shall," asserted Myra calmly. "Mr. Bartrow, how did you ever come to call your mine the 'Little Myriad'?"
If the bottom had suddenly dropped out of his coffee cup, Bartrow could not have been more disconcerted. Constance, who was in his secret, laughed gleefully, and clapped her hands.
"Tell her, Dick; tell her all about it. If you don't I shall."
Bartrow stammered and stumbled until Connie went into ecstasies of mischievous delight. After two or three helpless beginnings, he said, rather tamely, "I thought it was a pretty name."
"But it's so odd; a myriad is many, and a mine is only one."
"Oh, the meaning didn't have anything to do with it," rejoined Bartrow, going straight to his own discomfiture with refreshing candor. "It was the—the suggestion; the similarity; the—By Jove! we're there at last; this is the mine switch."