f the girl
who was hurrying toward him down the aisle.

"Oh, Oskar, I've just got a minute. I stopped in to remind you that
this is Saturday, and we're going tobogganing this afternoon, and I've
asked Mr. Wentworth and some of the crowd, and there'll be four or five
toboggans, and it will be no end jolly. And this is my birthday, and
you're a dear to think of it and send me all those flowers, and I'm
going to wear 'em to-night. Listen, Elsie Campbell is giving a dinner
for me this evening and of course you're not invited because it's just
too funny the way she has snubbed you lately, and there's a show in
town and after dinner we're going. Of course it won't be any good, but
she's making a theatre party of it, and it sounds grand anyway. And I
must hurry along now because I must remind Dad that he promised me a
fur coat the day I was twenty-one, and I'll be back after a while and
you can help me pick it out. Good-by, see you later!" And she was
gone, leaving Hedin gazing after her with a smile as he strove to
digest the jumble of uncorrelated information of which she had
unburdened herself. "Wentworth, and some of the crowd! Oh, it will be
jolly, all right--damn Wentworth!"

Old John McNabb looked up from his papers as his daughter burst into
his private office and, rushing to his side, planted a kiss squarely
upon the top of his bald head. "I came in to tell you I'm twenty-one
to-day," she announced.

"Well, well, so ye are! Ye come into the world on the first of March,
true to the old sayin', an' ye've be'n boisterous ever since.
Twenty-one years old, an' tell me now, what have ye ever accomplished?
When I was your age I'd be'n livin' in the bush north of 60 for two
years, an' could do my fifty miles on snowshoes an' carry a pack."

"Maybe I can't do fifty miles a day on snowshoes, and I'm sure it isn't
my fault I don't live north of 60. But I'm in a hurry; I promised to
help Mr. Wentworth pick out a toboggan cap. I stopped in to remind you
that you promised me a fur coat on my twenty-first birthday."

The old man regarded her thoughtfully. "So I did, so I did," he
repeated absently. "This Wentworth, now--he's been kickin' around an
uncommon lot, lately. Tell me again, who is he? What does he do for a
livin'?"

"Why, he's a civil engineer--hydraulic work is his specialty. He has
been employed by some company that intended to put in a power plant of
some kind on Nettle River, and either the com