Sally of Missouri

by Rose E. Young

Madeira seemed to be trying to quiet himself. He went down to the garden fence and looked at the oak forest on the other side of the Di, puckered up his mouth, as though to whistle, but stopped short of it, and came sauntering back toward his daughter. "He is going to do what I tell him to do, Honey," he made answer. "And I'm telling him to put the Canaan Mining and Development Company into the Tigmores after zinc."

"I should think, though," she said then, slowly, "that even if the matter is in your hands now, it would be to your ultimate advantage to have Mr. Steering in with you. He is the next owner, and, if old Grierson should die, whatever work you have done on the Tigmores would go for nothing. I should think it would be almost essential for you and Mr. Steering to be together."

He let his chair down angrily. "There isn't a big enough scheme in the universe to accommodate Steering and me together! He is a blamed idiot," he said doggedly. And it became clear to her that in his bull-headed way he had forged all the links of one of his intense antagonisms. He had been like that all his life; of pronounced personality himself, he had never been able to abide pronounced personality in those with whom he came in contact. He had ridden rough-shod over inferior men all his life; he liked to ride rough-shod; he was never pleased when his path crossed people over whom he could not ride rough-shod. Generally she had accepted his classification of those who opposed him strongly as "blamed idiots"; sometimes with a little of her laughing banter, but usually, his superiority standing out sharp and clear when opposed to the dull Canaanites, endorsing his opinion. "I sort of wish," he went on, with that keen, wire-edged exasperation still sawing in his voice, "that you wouldn't have much to do with that chap. He isn't my kind of people. I shouldn't mind if, now that you've given him a good high swing, you'd let him drop."

"Why, Father! You oughtn't to forget that there was one time in your life when he might have let you drop—and didn't!"

He saw that he had got himself before her in too keen a light.

"Yes, but you don't expect me to let him hold me up by the collar forever, do you, Pet? That's his dog-on way, anyhow—wants to dictate. I can't stand a man who wants to dictate. I think we've had enough of him. That's what I mean, and all I mean." He patted her hands and got up from his chair again. "There comes Samson with the mail," he said nervously.

A negro man rode up through the big gate at the front of the grounds and came on to Madeira, who took two letters from him. "One for you, Sally," said Madeira, "and one for me."

"Oh, from Elsie Gossamer!" she cried, and took her letter and sat, unobservant of him, for several moments, the little frown that his words had brought out still on her brow. Presently she looked up and saw that he had read his letter, and had put it in his pocket; he was tilted back against the crab-apple tree again, his forehead knit, his eyes brilliant, a peculiar fixity in their gaze. "Oh, here!" she cried protestingly, "you look as though you had just decided to become the President of the United States of America! Stop scowling and listen; Elsie is after me again to join her in Europe. She is fairly eloquent with the project——"

He broke in upon her with a sudden intensity of interest: "Do it!" he cried. "It's the very thing. You go. You go and have a good time."

"I don't want to go so awfully," she began hesitatingly. "I've been away from you a lot in the last two years. I don't care so much about it."