) and to his children, bright and buxom
girls of twenty-odd, he was a fond and gruffly indulgent provider,
making little protest over new gowns and parties. He had no sons, and
this was a hidden sorrow to him, and had the effect of centring all
his paternal pride and care in his daughters. He could deny them
nothing when they wheedled him, and they were nearly always humorously
and brazenly trying to "work him," as he called it. Only in one
particular had he been granite. With means to build on the east side
of the Park, he had deliberately chosen the Riverside Drive in order
to show his contempt for the social climbers of upper Fifth Avenue,
and neither smiles nor tears had availed to change his plan.

His house was a dignified structure exteriorly, but within was
dominated by his taste rather than by that of his daughters, who were
quite unable to change his habits after they were once set. He refused
to consider their suggestions as to furniture. The interior was, as
Britt had said, not unlike a very ornately formal French hotel, and
this resemblance arose from the fact that he had once enjoyed a
pleasant stay in a house of this sort; and when the decorator
submitted a number of "schemes," he chose the one which made the
pleasantest impression on his mind.

With three women at the table, he habitually took charge of the
dinner, controlling the menu and the decorations as well. It amused
outsiders to see him in wordy consultation with the head-waiter and
the butler while his guest of honor vainly tried to continue some
story he had begun, but his wife suffered in silence. In short, Simeon
proceeded precisely as he would have done at a restaurant or at his
club, and his family stood clear of his elbow, the girls with sly
shrugs of their rounded shoulders, the wife meekly, but ineffectually,
protesting against his usurpation of her domain.

He was not politically ambitious, and was in a fair way to grow old as
one of the obscure millionaires of New York City when death reached a
sable hand and smote him full in the front of his pride and
assurance--his wife and daughters were lost in the sinking of a boat
off the coast of France.

The news of this disaster came to him as he sat at his desk--the
morning papers had given no hint of it. "I don't believe it," he said,
quietly, and began pressing the buttons of his desk with the same
swift calmness he would have used had the markets been going against
him. Messages flew