abruptness of one whose dealings have been
with men oftener than with women: "In the first place, I wish you'd tell
me what I've been doing to get myself into your bad books."

She laughed easily. "Who said you had been doing anything, Mr.
Hathaway?" she asked.

"The senator," he answered shortly, adding: "He told me I'd have to make
my peace with you."

She had developed a sudden interest in the quaint Japanese figures on
the ivory sticks of her fan. "You want something, Mr. Hathaway; what is
it?" she inquired.

"I want to be put next in this pigs-in-clover railroad puzzle," was the
blunt statement of the need. "Our freight contract with the
Transcontinental is about to expire, and I'd like to get it renewed on
the same terms as before."

"Well," she said ingenuously, "why don't you do it?"

"I can't," he blustered. "Everybody has suddenly grown mysterious or
gone crazy--I don't know which. Kittredge, the general superintendent,
don't seem to remember that we ever had any contract, and Gantry is just
as bad. And when I go to the senator he tells me I must make my peace
with you. I'm left out in the cold; I can't begin to _sabe_ what the
senator and these railroad brass-collar men are driving at. I've got
something to sell; something that the railroad company needs. Where the
d---- I mean, where's the hitch?"

The small person in the fetching party-gown reached up and pinched a
leaf from a fragrant shrub fronting the settee.

"Mr. Gantry has gone to fetch me an ice, and he will be back in a very
few minutes," she suggested mildly. "Consider your peace made, Mr.
Hathaway, and tell me what I can do for you."

"You can put me next," said the lumber lord, going back to the only
phrase that seemed to fit the exigencies of the case. "Why the--why
can't we get our contract renewed?"

The little lady was opening and shutting her fan slowly. "What was your
contract?" she inquired innocently.

"If I thought you didn't know, I'd go a long time without telling you,"
he said bluntly. "But you do know. It's the rebate lumber rate from our
mills at Twin Buttes and elsewhere, and it was given us two years ago, a
few days before election."

"And the consideration?" she asked, looking up quickly.

"You know that, too, Mrs. Blount. It was the swinging of the solid
employees' vote of the Twin Buttes Lumber Company over to the railroad
ticket."

"And you wish to make the same arrangement again?"

"Exactly. We've got to h