"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. He's a fine young man and he is bound to be a howling success in everything he undertakes." He smiled reminiscently. "I rather thought there was something between you two," he went on, still patting her shoulder, "and when Dan Westlake told me that his girl thought a great deal of Sam and that he was going to buy enough stock in Sam's company to give Sam control, I turned right around and bought just as much stock as Westlake had, although just before the meeting I had refused to invest as much money as Sam wanted me to. Moreover, Westlake and myself, between us, stopped the move to pool the outside stock, just yet. He's a smart young man, that boy," he continued admiringly. "I didn't see, until I went into that meeting, why he was so crazy to have me buy enough stock to gain control— What's the matter?"
He stopped in perplexity, for his daughter, looking aghast at him, had pushed back from his embrace and was regarding him with perfectly round eyes, while over her face, at first pale, there gradually crept a crimson flush.
"Well, of all things!" she gasped. "Of all the cold-blooded, cruel, barter-and-sale proceedings! Why, father, how—how could you! How could he! I never in all my life—"
"Why, Jo, what do you mean? What's the trouble?"
"If you don't understand I can't make you," she said helplessly.
"Well, I'll be—busted!" observed Mr. Stevens under his breath.
To his infinite relief Sam came in just then, and Mr. Stevens, wondering what he had done now, slipped hastily out of the room. Mr. Turner, coming from the bright office into the dim room and innocent of any change in the atmosphere, approached confidently and eagerly to Miss Josephine with both hands extended, but she stepped back most indignantly.
"You need not finish what you were going to say!" she warned him. "My father has just given me some information which changes the entire aspect of affairs. I am not a part of a business bargain! I refuse to be regarded as a commercial proposition! I heard something from Mr. Princeman of what desperate efforts you were making to secure the command, whatever that may be, of the—of the stock—board—of shares in your new company, but I did not think you would go to such lengths as this!"
"Why, my dear girl," began Sam, shocked.