w. Nobody went near her? The poor little thing!"

"Who are they?" said Paul.

"Why, she's a little blonde, sickly-looking thing of sixteen,"
explained Miss Chisholm, "and Len's a lumberman. They have a little
blue-nosed, sickly baby; it was born about six weeks ago, at her
father's ranch, above here. She was--she had no mother, the poor
child--"

"And in fact, my sister escorted the benefit of clergy to them about
two months ago," said Alan, "and the ladies of the Company House are
very haughty about it."

"They won't be long," predicted Miss Chisholm, confidently. "The idea!
I can forgive Mrs. Hopps, because she's only a kid herself; but Mrs.
Tolley ought to have been big enough! However!"

"This place honestly can't spare you for ten minutes, Pat," her brother
said.

"Well, honestly," she was beginning seriously, when she saw he was
laughing at her, and broke off, with a shamefaced, laughing look for
Paul. Then she announced that she was going down to the power-house,
and, packing her thin white skirts about her, she started off, and they
followed.

Paul was not accustomed to seeing a lady in the power-house, and
thought that her enthusiasm was rather nice to watch. She flitted about
the great barnlike structure like a contented child, insisted upon
displaying the trim stock-room to Paul, demanded a demonstration of the
switchboard, spread her pretty hands over the whirling water that
showed under the glass of the water-wheels, and hung, fascinated, over
the governors.

"I never get used to it," said Patricia, above the steady roaring of
the river. "Do you realize that you are in one of the greatest force
factories of the world? Look at it!" She swept with a gesture the
monster machinery that shone and glittered all about them. "Do you
realize that people miles and miles away are reading by lights and
taking street-cars that are moved by this? Don't talk to me about the
subway and the Pennsylvania Terminal!"

"Oh, come, now!" said Paul.

"Well!" she flared. "Do you suppose that anything bigger was ever done
in this world than getting these things--these generators and
water-wheels and the corrugated iron for the roof, and the door-knobs
and tiles and standards and switchboard, and everything else, up to the
top of the ridge from Emville and down this side of the ridge? I see
that never occurred to you! Why, you don't KNOW what it was. Struggle,
struggle, struggle, day after day--ropes breaking, and tack