She was the apple of papa's eye; and she rather enjoyed hearing him talk of his manifold business activities, which was a thing he was not too often encouraged to do. To-day the master of the Works was annoyed into speech by recent nagging: not merely from the Commissioner of Labor, but from the Building Inspector, who had informally stopped him on the street that morning....
"Don't you think, papa," Carlisle said sweetly, "that it will all end in something like the French Revolution?"
Mr. Heth thought it extremely likely.
"Well," said he, "I shan't be bothered by their college folderol. O'Neill's easy enough managed. All I need to do is invite him and Missus O. to dinner."
"Who's O'Neill?" demanded Mrs. Heth, gliding in.
For the second time during the meal, she had been absent from the table, on a telephone call. She always answered these summonses personally, regardless of when they came, appearing to fear that otherwise she might miss something.
"And who," she added, "is going to invite him to dinner?"
Mr. Heth explained, and said that nobody was. He'd only mentioned the possibility if the fellow ever got troublesome, which was most unlikely. His wife was a climber--social bug, you know. "Pays to know your man, eh, Cally?..."
"I should say! And O'Neill's wife manages him?"
"Don't they always?" said he, pinching her little pink ear. And thereupon he bethought himself of a thoroughly characteristic quotation, which he rendered right jovially: