HARRIGAN, THAT'S ME!
Never before had the air of that long, paneled room been so surcharged with half-suppressed hilarity. At first her father merely scowled at Barbara's intermittent little gurgles, which refused to stay entirely pent-up; he frowned at her seemingly inane interruptions of the technical discussion into which he had immediately plunged with the East Coast Company's engineer, until he could no longer ignore the smile which pulled at the lips of the latter, too, at every fresh attempt of the girl to swing the conversation into an utterly irrelevant channel. He looked around the table then and caught the gleam in Caleb's eyes; he took note of Miss Sarah's illuminated face, and gave way to a burst of querulousness not all simulation.
"What is the joke?" he demanded in a voice that set them all to rocking in their chairs. "Let me in on it—let me laugh, too—if there is anything worth laughing at. Cal, you're growing old—old and feeble-witted!"
He turned sternly to his daughter, but the darkly glowing eyes which she lifted to his absolutely silenced him for an instant. Twin devils of mischief fairly danced in their shimmering, liquid depths. The girl's face, even to him who had long before grown overfamiliar with its beauty, was a wonderfully lovely thing. Allison sat and stared at her for a moment, blankly, and when he went on his voice had become less testy.
"And you," he growled, "you have interrupted me a dozen times already, always with some nonsense of which I can make neither rime nor reason. Now, if you don't mind, I'd like to get Mr. O'Mara's reason for establishing his headquarters at Thirty-Mile, instead of directing the work from Morrison, which would seem to be far more convenient."
Barbara bobbed her head, meekly. Her giggle, however, was shameless.
"But Mr. O'Mara has been trying to tell you," she defended in a suffocated small voice, "that it's because the work at this end is not so difficult. There are several miles of swamp work, I think he said, and a bridge or something, which promises trouble. I—I am sorry if I interrupted. I only wanted to ask Mr. O'Mara a question myself—a—a very unimportant question, I'm afraid!"
Allison had had experience with his daughter's seeming meekness. Moreover, the working of Caleb's and Sarah's faces baffled him. He waited, fuming.
"Just before you and Uncle Cal came in we—we were talking about the weather," the girl struggled on. "Mr. O'Mara predicted it would rain soon and I just wanted to ask him what made him think so."
"Yes?" Allison temporized.