“Brother or cousin, he's got to get off the track or be run over. And you, too, with that smooth tongue of yours.”
Farnum laughed. “Jeff's pretty solid. He may ditch the train, sir.”
“No!” roared Powers. “He'll be flung into the ditch.” He turned abruptly to Frome. “Peter, take me to a room where I can talk to this young man. I need him.”
“'Come into my little parlor,' said the spider to the fly.”
They wheeled as at a common rein to the sound of the young mocking voice. Alice Frome had come in unnoticed and was standing in the doorway smiling at them. The effect she produced was demurely daring. The long lines of her slender sylph-like body, the girlishness of her golden charm, were vigorously contradicted in their suggestion of shyness by the square tilted chin and the challenge in the dancing eyes.
“Alice,” admonished her father with a deprecatory apology in his voice to his brother-in-law.
Powers knit his shaggy brows in a frown not at all grim. The young woman smiled back confidently. She could go farther with him than anybody else in the world could, and she knew it. For he recognized in her vigorous strength of fiber a kinship of the spirit closer than that between him and his own daughter. An autocrat to the marrow, it pleased him to recognize her an exception to his rule. Valencia was also an exception, but in a different way.
“Have you any remarks to make, Miss Frome?” he asked.
“Oh, I've made it,” returned the girl unabashed. She turned to James and shook hands with him. “How do you do, Mr. Farnum? I see you are going to be tied to Uncle Joe's kite, too.”
Was there in her voice just a hint of scorn? James did not know. He laughed a little uneasily.