r, looking aghast at him, had
pushed back from his embrace and was regarding him with perfectly round
eyes, while over her face, at first pale, there gradually crept a
crimson flush.

"Well, of all things!" she gasped. "Of all the cold-blooded, cruel,
barter-and-sale proceedings! Why, father, how--how could you! How
could he! I never in all my life--"

"Why, Jo, what do you mean? What's the trouble?"

"If you don't understand I can't make you," she said helplessly.

"Well, I'll be--busted!" observed Mr. Stevens under his breath.

To his infinite relief Sam came in just then, and Mr. Stevens,
wondering what he had done now, slipped hastily out of the room. Mr.
Turner, coming from the bright office into the dim room and innocent of
any change in the atmosphere, approached confidently and eagerly to
Miss Josephine with both hands extended, but she stepped back most
indignantly.

"You need not finish what you were going to say!" she warned him. "My
father has just given me some information which changes the entire
aspect of affairs. I am not a part of a business bargain! I refuse to
be regarded as a commercial proposition! I heard something from Mr.
Princeman of what desperate efforts you were making to secure the
command, whatever that may be, of the--of the stock--board--of shares
in your new company, but I did not think you would go to such lengths
as this!"

"Why, my dear girl," began Sam, shocked.

"I am not your dear girl and I never shall be," she told him, and
angrily dabbed at some sudden tears. "I never was. I was only a
business possibility."

"That's unjust," he charged her. "I don't see how you could accuse me
of regarding you in any other way than as the dearest and the sweetest
and the most beautiful girl in all the world, the wisest and the most
sensible, the most faithful, the most charming, the most delightful,
the most everything that is desirable."

"Wait just a moment," she told him, very coldly indeed; with almost
extravagant coldness, in fact, as she beat out of her consciousness the
enticing epithets he had bestowed upon her. "Do you mean to say that
never in your calculations did you consider that if you married me my
father would vote his stock with yours--I believe that's the way he
puts it--and give you command or whatever it is of your company?"

"Well," considered Sam, brought to a standstill and put straight upon
his honor, "I can't deny that it did seem to me a ver