“Hello, Lady Pat!” cried Allen.  “What’s happened?”

Patricia stamped her foot.  “Alice is a naughty, naughty girl,” she cried, with tears in her eyes.  “I don’t love her any more.”

“Tut, tut.”  Allen sat on the lowest step and soothed the child.  “Alice is all right.”

“No, she isn’t,” Patricia insisted.  Then she pulled away from him and again stood very straight, immaculate in her white frock.  “I’ve been listening up-stairs.”

“Oh, ho!” Allen shook his finger reproachfully.  “Was that a nice thing to do?”

“It was my duty,” the child responded, impressively.  “I always do that, and I heard what she said; but I will make it up to you.”

“That’s awfully good of you, Lady Pat.”

“You may kiss me.”  She held her face forward, with her hands still behind her.

Allen drew her into his lap.  “There’s one for the lips, and one for each eye, and one for each cheek,” suiting the action to the word.  Patricia worked herself free.

“Now we’re engaged,” she announced.  “You may marry me as soon as you like.”

Allen concealed his amusement.  “I can’t marry you because I’ve made a vow to marry Alice, and it would never do to break a vow, would it?”

“But if the lady won’t marry you, then you are released from your vow,” Patricia explained, showing perfect familiarity with the laws of chivalry.

“Not until she marries some one else,” he corrected.

“That’s all right,” the child assented, cheerfully; “until then you can be my Knight.”  Then she majestically untied the ribbon in her hair and held it out to him.

“What’s this for?” he inquired.

“For you—­to wear always.  Every knight in my Round Table book has a token from his lady-love.”

“I shall wear it next my heart,” Allen told her.  “And now, fair Lady Pat, good-bye.”

The child made a magnificent courtesy.  “Good-bye, Sir Launcelot, ’til death asunder.”

XIII

John Covington’s mind had been fully occupied during the few days which succeeded Harris’s call.  Inwardly he blamed himself as a bungler not to have covered his footsteps with greater skill; outwardly he was as unruffled and self-satisfied as ever.  He called on Brady with Harris, as he promised.  He allowed them both to explain their plans with even greater detail than Harris’s previous disclosures.  He listened, calmly and unprotestingly, to their confident statements as to what they proposed to make him, as a director in the Consolidated Companies, do for them.  Then with equal serenity he flatly declined to yield to the pressure brought to bear upon him.

“I suppose you understand what this means to you,” Brady snapped, angered by the unexpected refusal.

“Better than you do, I feel certain.”

“What will the virtuous Mr. Gorham say when he finds out that you hold all that stock?”