Cappy smiled a still small smile as he bent over her.

“Fiddlesticks!” he replied.  “Only the day before yesterday Matt told me he didn’t want to work for me; that he didn’t want a relative handing him any favors; and that he wasn’t marrying you to ease himself into a soft job for life.  He said he wanted to make the fight himself.  And do you know, Florry, if he had been my own boy I couldn’t have been prouder of him than when he told me that!  When old What-you-may-call-him in Shakespeare’s play said:  ’Let me have men about me that are fat,’ it showed how blamed little Shakespeare knew about men.  He should have said:  ’Let me have men about me who are long and tough, and fairly thick in the middle; let me have scrappy boys about me with backbone!’

“Well, in a way, Florry, I was disappointed, and perhaps, in the heat of the moment, I showed it, as I have a habit of doing; but after Matt had left the office, and I got to thinking it over, away down low I was proud of him.  Consequently when he reversed his decision yesterday I knew why, for I lived twenty-five years with your mother.  But a woman’s love is selfish sometimes, and I knew that Matt had surrendered, not to me, but to you; though he came across like a sport, he didn’t want to, for you’d roweled him and roped him with your love, my dear—­and, though you do not know it, that’s a terrible thing to do to a free-running colt like Matt Peasley.  He has his code, and it’s a bully code; and I don’t want you to tie knots in it, Florry.  Won’t you be as spunky and independent as he is, and give him his head for six months more?  He’ll probably call sometime to-day, or ring up, to tell you how I picked holes in the program; and when he does I want you to smile and tell him you’re glad of it, and suggest a postponement of the wedding until he has demonstrated to me that he is a business man.”

Florence looked up and bravely smiled a forgiving smile through her tears.

“You’re a dreadful Buttinsky, Daddy Ricks!” she protested.

He kissed her hungrily.

“Oh, I’m a devil in my own home town!” he replied, and trotted back to his neglected breakfast.  “If Matt hasn’t made good as a business man within six months, or has lost his bank roll—­and I intend to see to it that he does lose it, if I ever get a hack at him—­we’ll pull off this wedding anyhow.  I guess there’s room enough in this house for three.”

At nine o’clock Cappy Ricks, with a lilt in his heart, drove down to his office behind his team of high-stepping bays.  At the corner of California and Drumm Streets he saw Matt Peasley and hailed him.  The latter came to the carriage door and looked in.

“It’s all right, Matt,” Cappy said with a cunning wink.  “I’ve fixed Florry’s clock for her.  There won’t be the slightest trouble.”

Matt Peasley wrung his hand gratefully.

“I quit the Sea Fox last night,” he announced gladly.