“I am losing the factory as well. I’ll have to sell out for a song. I can’t compete with cutthroats–––”
“Are you going to hurry and dress so we can go?” She smiled her prettiest.
At one time Steve would have noted only that white tulle and pearls spun witchery, and her skirt possessed the charm of a Hawaiian girl’s dancing costume. Even at this juncture he recalled and smiled at past blindness.
“You don’t seem to understand what I am saying, and all that is happening. First I played Arizona copper until they taught me not to monkey with the band wagon; then I played Cobalt until the same thing took place.” He sank impolitely into an easy-chair. “Then I got the chance to come in with the gang––an insulting proposition any way you want to figure––a paltry sum for everything I have and the statement in veiled terms that I need not expect to have that unless I did as they dictate.”
“Well––sell your business to someone else before this happens!”
“I couldn’t even if I wished to cheat; it is quite the talk of the town.”
“Well––manage. Papa will tell you how. Why do you come running to me? Goodness, don’t stare like that. It’s nothing unusual to manage! I don’t know about business––you made a lot of money once and I should think you could do it again.”
“It doesn’t bother me as much as you think,” he said, almost breathlessly, eager to know the worst. “It means I am a poor man in your estimation. I can sell out to these people, who have thrown a steel ring round their game, so to speak, and had to do it until your father was out of the running. I can never buck them––I’m not fool enough to be goaded on to try. Your father could not win out the way things are now––but he could have prevented their ever getting the upper hand––because he knows every last turn of the wheel. They could not have fooled him. I didn’t know what was coming until it was too late. A get-rich-quick man always pays for his own speed!”
“Stevuns, you’ll make me so nervous I can’t go to-night. It’s a lovely party. You stay home and tell papa all about it, but leave me in peace.”