"You ought to be punished!"
"But you won't marry Allen, will you?" Pat pleaded, unblushingly. "You can have Mr. Covington and I will have Allen, and we all will be happy ever afterward."
"Oh, you—kids, that's what you both are!" Alice cried in sheer desperation. "Between you, I can't get a moment's peace."
"He would make a lovely Knight." Patricia's face assumed an enraptured expression. "Oh, I wish I was a damosel, with a vessel of gold between my hands, and Allen was Sir Launcelot, and I would say, 'Wit ye well,' and he would kneel and say his prayers to me, and—Alice, what does 'Wit ye well' mean, anyhow?"
But Alice had fled, leaving Patricia the victrix of her bloodless battle-field.
XVIII
James Riley's information, while causing Gorham some concern, was not the matter which gave him the greatest anxiety during the days he passed away from his office. The fact that Buckner was in town was not altogether surprising, and his maudlin comments need not necessarily be seriously considered. In addition to the commission he intrusted to young Riley, Gorham also set in motion the wheels of his own secret-service department, feeling confident that he would soon learn all the facts. The conduct of the current business of the Companies, complex as it had now become, appeared to be advancing steadily along the lines which he himself had laid down for it, and he saw no reason to think that his temporary absence was causing the slightest disarrangement of the delicately adjusted machine upon which depended the continued momentum of the business. This interested him particularly, as he considered that the crowning point of his successful formation of the Consolidated Companies would not be attained until his actual contact with the business was not required.
But great enterprises do not expand themselves without the jealous watchfulness of other competing or interested organizations, and Gorham's daily reports contained an increasing number of references to the efforts being made by these to harass the Consolidated Companies with governmental interference. Senator Kenmore had by this time become the chief spokesman of the Companies in Washington. Since his first exhaustive examination into its affairs, his doubts as to the possibility of conducting so mammoth a consolidation along conscientious lines had been dissipated by the absolute straightness of the course which Gorham steered. His influence had been exerted frequently in behalf of the Companies, and each time the success which thus came to the corporation carried in its wake advantages to the people, just as Gorham had promised. The Senator had become one of Gorham's stanchest admirers and supporters, and the president of the Consolidated Companies in turn relied fully upon him. For several weeks Kenmore's correspondence had suggested certain unrest in the Senate concerning trusts and consolidations, so when Gorham received from him an urgent summons to come to Washington at once, it left no room for doubt as to the necessity which prompted its sending, and obliged him for the present to abandon his idea of rest.
Gorham found Kenmore awaiting him in his office, and the Senator, with characteristic directness, came to the point at once.
"Some one is starting up another scare on monopolies and combinations, and is making the Consolidated Companies the target. Do you know anything about it?"