If it were wet they rode up on the funny little cable cars, finding a place, whenever possible, on the forward end, which Maizie called the “observation platform.”  As they passed the Nob Hill mansions of Hopkins, Stanford and Crocker, and the more modest adobe of the Fairs, Maizie sometimes fancied herself the chatelaine of such a castle, giving an almost imperceptible sigh as the car dipped over the crest of Powell street toward the meaner levels just below where she and her mother lived.  Their little yard was always bright with flowers, and from the rear window one had a marvelous view of the water.  She seldom failed to walk into the back room and feast her eyes on that marine panorama before she returned to listen to her mother’s fretful maunderings over vanished fortunes.

Tonight as they sat with Jeanne and Francisco in front of the crackling fire, Maizie’s hunger for a home of her own and the man she loved was so plain that Jeanne arose impulsively and put an arm about her guest.  She said nothing, but Maizie understood.  There was a lump in her throat.  “I should not think such things,” she told herself.  “I am selfish ... unfilial.”

Robert was talking.  She smiled at him bravely and listened.  “Mother’s planning to go East,” she heard him say.  “She’s always wanted to, and as she grows older it’s almost an obsession.  So father’s finally decided to go, too, and let me run the business ...  I’ll be an orphan soon, like you, Francisco.”

“Oh,” said Maizie.  “Do you mean that you’ll be all alone?”

Robert smiled, “Quite....  Po Lun and Hang Far plan a trip to China ... want to see their parents before they die.  The Chinese are great for honoring their forebears....  Sometimes I think,” he added, whimsically, “that Maizie is partly Chinese.”

The girl flushed.  Jeanne made haste to change the subject.  “How is your friend, Dennis Kearney?” she asked Francisco.

“Oh, he’s left the agitator business ... he’s a grain broker now.  But Dennis started something.  Capital is a little more willing to listen to labor.  And Chinese immigration will be restricted, perhaps stopped altogether.  The Geary Exclusion Act is before Congress now, and more or less certain to pass.”

“He’s a strange fellow,” said Jeanne, reminiscently.  “I wonder if he still hates everyone who disagrees with him.  Loring Pickering was one of his pet enemies.”

“Oh, Dennis is forgiving, like all Irishmen,” said Robert.  Impulsively he laid a hand on Maizie’s.

“Maizie is part Irish, too,” he added, meaningly.  The girl smiled at him star-eyed.  For she understood.

CHAPTER LXXI

THE BLIND BOSS

Francisco met the erstwhile agitator on the street one day.  He had made his peace with many former foes, including Pickering.”

“Politics is a rotten game, me b’y,” he said, by way of explanation.  “And I’ve a family, two little girruls at home.  I want thim to remimber their father as something besides a blatherskite phin they grow up.  So I’m in a rispictible business again....  There’s a new boss now, bad cess to him!  Chris Buckley.