at Coverley's school, and young Tony's friends were
by no means theirs.

Mr. Upton thought Lettice would know, and was going to speak to her on the
telephone when Horace reminded him of his own remark about its being "a
man's matter"; it was beginning to look, even to Horace, like a serious
one as well, and in his opinion it was much better that neither his mother
nor his sister should know anything at all about it before it was
absolutely necessary. Horace now quoted his mother's dream as the devil
did Scripture, but adduced sounder arguments besides; he was speaking
quite nicely of them both, for instance, when he declared that Lettice was
wrapped up in Tony, and would be beside herself if she thought any evil
had overtaken him. It would be simply impossible for her to hide her
anxiety from the mother on whom she also waited hand and foot. Mr. Upton
disagreed a little there; he had good reason to believe in Lettice's power
of suppressing her own feelings; but for her own sake, and particularly in
view of that discredited dream, he now decided to keep his daughter in the
dark as long as his wife.

It was his first decision; his next was to motor over to the school, as he
had fortunately told his wife he might, and have a word with Mr. Spearman,
who deserved hanging for the whole thing! The mischief was done, however,
and it was now a matter in which home and school authorities must act
together. A clerk was instructed to telephone to the garage for the car
to come straight to the works. And the ironmaster stood waiting at his
office window in a fever of anxiety.

The grimy scene on which he looked had a constant charm for him, and yet
to-day it almost added to the bitterness of his heart. His was the brain
that had conceived those broad effects of smoke and flame, and blackened
faces lit by the light of molten metal; his the strong hand and the stout
heart which had brought his conception into being. Those were his trucks
bringing in his ore from his mines; that was his consequential little
locomotive fussing in front of them. His men, dwellers in his cottages on
the brow of that hill, which was also his, happened to be tapping one of
his furnaces at the moment; that was his pig-iron running out into the
moulds as magically as an electric advertisement writes itself upon the
London sky at night. The sense of possession is the foible of many who
have won all they have; the ironmaster almost looked upon the ho