He must remember to warn Reva that she was not to interfere with this young man, for the father well knew his daughter was not calculated to help any young man to maintain a quiet manner and keep in the background.

It was not desirable that his new assistant should take a place in the worldly circles, not at least until he had thoroughly established himself as one to be depended upon in every way.

So the keen businessman sat and conversed pleasantly with his new employee, guiding the conversation in the lines he had planned, that he might get a line on him from every angle. And Paige felt more at his ease now that the family were eliminated from the picture, for he had not liked the role of being on display, which the hostess, even more than her forward daughter, created. Of course he did not realize that the mother, recognizing certain interest in her daughter’s eyes, was studying him to see just what attitude she should take regarding him in case Reva decided to take him over. Would this be an alliance—the mother called it in her mind a “friendship”—that she could approve and do nothing about, or something that would have to be fought out, even to the length of sending the girl away somewhere on an expensive trip till the danger was over?

Back in the living room they were talking it over, the mother and the sulky daughter.

“I think Dad’s perfectly horrid,” said Reva, pouting in the corner of the big comfortable couch and lighting a cigarette, “making me stay home to entertain his new henchman and then carrying him off for a private talk just when he was getting interesting.”

“I didn’t know you had any particular interest in him, Reva,” said her mother, watching the girl sharply.

“Oh, I don’t, of course,” laughed the girl with a sneer. “He probably belongs to some common family, but all the same, he’s good looking. Don’t you think so, Mother?”

“Oh, fairly so,” said the mother indifferently. “Of course, being in the service, the uniform can make almost any ordinary fellow look really more or less distinguished. Go carefully, Reva, even at your father’s request. He really has very little sense about looking after you.”

“I don’t need any looking after,” said the girl, with a scornful toss of her pretty head. “I’ve been around a lot, and I think I’m a better judge than you are of young men. I think he’s rather swell, myself. Of course, he’s a bit stuffy in his attitude, doesn’t fall for a girl very easily. Seems terribly on his guard. But I can easily break that down if I decide I want to. But Dad invited him here for us to look him over, and now he carries him off to the library and keeps him there, and I don’t like it! But he needn’t think he can do that to me. I’ll give him just five minutes more, and then I’m going in there and start something.”

“Now, Reva,” protested her mother, “you know your dad won’t like that.”

“I should worry,” said the girl, with another toss of her head. “I know how to manage Dad, and if he wants my help with his hired assistants, he’ll have to do as I say.”

“My child, that is no way to speak about your father. You know he insists upon your being respectful to him.”

“Oh, yeah? Well, if he wants me respectful, he’ll have to be respectful to me, see? This is the day of young people, and their parents can’t lay down the law the way they used to do when you folks were young!”

“Reva! How perfectly terrible you are! I insist that you shall not talk in that ridiculous modern way! And you mustn’t think of going into the library until your father calls you. Stop! Reva! Where are you going? I tell you, you mustn’t think of it.”

“Oh, I’m not thinking!” laughed the girl derisively. “It doesn’t take thinking to defy Dad. You just do what you want to and then act all innocent! He wouldn’t lift his finger to get it back on you.”

Then the willful girl turned and flaunted herself toward the library door.

“Reva! Stop, child! You simply mustn’t interrupt your father when he’s talking business.”

“Ta-ta!” said Reva as she vanished into the library and shut the door.

Mr. Chalmers had just been explaining some of his methods to his new assistant.

“You know, you have all classes to deal with in a business like this, and you have to learn to be all things to all men. That’s where you come in. I hear that you have been well brought up and know how to be courteous, even to the people you would naturally despise. We naturally get all classes of people in our business, and almost any of them will work things to their own advantage if they possibly can, regardless of honesty. It will be your job to be both firm and courteous, kid ’em along, you know, till you make them see they can’t play their game with us. We mean business, and if they don’t come to time according to agreement, we’ll take their property away from them.

“Now there are those people we were discussing last night. They are good-living people but a bit shiftless perhaps, and if they don’t feel inclined to pay on the dot they will perhaps expect us to let things run along. For that reason I have made their contract a bit ironclad. And if they try to slide out of things, we have other men in our number who can deal with them, if we have to get rough.