ve sent for you."

This was the last drop in the cup.

"What?" cried the girl, towering over the shrunken figure in the
revolving chair. "_Your son asked you to send for me_? Then he's as
bad, as cruel, as you are."

A red wave of rage swept over her. She no longer knew what she was
saying. Her one wish--her one object in life, it seemed just then--was
to hurt both Peters.

"I hate him!" she exclaimed. "Everything I've heard about him is true,
after all. He's a false friend and a false lover--a dangerous, cruel
man to women, just as I was warned he was."

"Stop right there," broke in Peter's father. "That's damn nonsense,
and you know it. Nobody ever warned you that my boy was anything of
the kind."

"I was warned," she beat him down, "that it was a habit of your son to
win a girl's confidence with his kind ways and then deceive her."

"Then it was a damned lie, and no one but a damned fool would believe
it," shouted Peter Rolls, Sr. "My boy a deceiver of women? Why, he's a
Gala-what-you-may-call-it! He'd die any death sooner than harm a
woman. I'm his father, and I know what I'm talking about. Who the
devil warned you? Some beast, or some idiot?"

"It was neither."

"Who was it, then? Come, out with it. I dare you to. I'll have him
sued for slander. I'll---"

"It wasn't a he. It was a woman who ought to know at least as much
about him as you do."

"There's no such woman, except his mother, and she worships the ground
he walks on. Thinks he's a kind of up-to-date Saint George, and I'm
hanged if she's far wrong. Why, since Peter was a boy he's never cared
that"--and a yellow thumb and finger snapped for emphasis under Win's
eyes--"for any woman till he got silly over you."

The girl laughed a fierce little laugh. "You tell me this? You defend
him to me? Is that policy?"

Peter senior suddenly looked foolish. He had straightened himself to
glare at the upstart. Now he collapsed again.

"No, it _ain't_ policy," he confessed, "but I guess it's human nature.
My blood ain't quite dried up yet, and I can't sit quiet while anybody
blackguards my own flesh and bone. You tell me who said these things
about him!"

"I will not tell you."

"Don't you know I'm liable to have you discharged for impudence?"

"You can't discharge me, for I've already discharged myself. I'd
rather starve than serve one more day at your horrid old Hands."

"Horrid old Hands, eh? I can keep you from getting a job in any other
store