ention to himself as a classical scholar, and then, as he impatiently
hit out with what he called pot-boilers in dialect, he got a popular
hearing and more money as well. All the time he was advancing in the
mills, and, as he advanced, he never failed to see before him the
flutter of Anne's discreet draperies or hear the click of her determined
heel. She never appeared in the business at all, but he was perfectly
sure there wasn't a preferment offered him by her father for which he
wasn't indebted to her manipulation of Hamilton in long, skillful hours
beforehand. Hamilton had no slightest idea he was being influenced, but,
as the years went on, he grew in appreciation of young Raven's business
abilities to such a degree that John, reading his mind like a familiar
tongue, wondered whether after all it was true, and he hadn't a genius
for the affairs of wool. Was he doing the thing that seemed so dull to
him with such mechanical and yet consummate cleverness that he was worth
all this unripe advancement, or was it indeed Anne's white hand that was
turning the wheel of power, her wand that was keeping the augmented
vision of him ever before her father's credulous eyes? But he could not
retard the wheels of his progress without making a fool of himself, and
by the time his sister had prosperously married and his mother had died,
he was a partner in the business, and then Hamilton also died and Raven
was asking Dick, hoping all the time he would refuse, if he wanted to
come in. Dick did refuse, with an instant hearty decision for which his
uncle inwardly blessed him. Raven had got so restive by this time over
the position he had himself won through Anne's generalship that he felt
the curse was going down through the family, and that Dick, if he should
come in, would wake up at forty-odd and find himself under the too heavy
shade of the Hamilton benevolence.

"Not on your life," said Dick, when he was halfheartedly offered the
chance of battening on wool, "not while Mum's got the dough. There's
only one of me, and she's bound to keep me going."

"You couldn't marry on it," said Raven.

For that also Dick was cheerfully prepared.

"By the time Nan's ready," he said, having at that point asked her
intermittently for several years, "I shall be getting barrelfuls out of
my plays."

"'If,'" quoted Raven, "'Medina Sidonia had waited for the skin of the
bear that was not yet killed, he might have catched a great cold.'"

"Tha