"So little," her companion replied, "that he comes here today for the very first time. I've some business to discuss with him that can best be discussed on this spot; and it's a vital part of that business that you too should take pains to make him welcome."
Miss Prodmore failed to ignite. "In his own house?"
"That it's _not_ his own house is just the point I seek to make! The way I look at it is that it's _my_ house! The way I look at it even, my dear"--in his demonstration of his ways of looking Mr. Prodmore literally expanded--"is that it's _our_ house. The whole thing is mortgaged, as it stands, for every penny of its value; and I'm in the pleasant position--do you follow me?" he trumpeted.
He caught her with a smile of approval and indeed of surprise. "You keep up with me better than I hoped. I hold every scrap of paper, and it's a precious collection."
She smothered, perceptibly, a vague female sigh, glancing over the place more attentively than she had yet done. "Do you mean that you can come down on him?"
"I don't need to 'come,' my dear--I _am_ 'down.' _This_ is down!"--and the iron point of Mr. Prodmore's stick fairly struck, as he rapped it, a spark from the cold pavement. "I came many weeks ago--commercially speaking--and haven't since budged from the place."
The girl moved a little about the hall, then turned with a spasm of courage. "Are you going to be very hard?"
If she read the eyes with which he met her she found in them, in spite of a certain accompanying show of pleasantry, her answer. "Hard with _you_?"
"No--that doesn't matter. Hard with the Captain."
Mr. Prodmore thought an instant. "'Hard' is a stupid, shuffling term. What do you mean by it?"
"Well, I don't understand business," Cora said; "but I think I understand _you_, papa, enough to gather that you've got, as usual, a striking advantage."
"As usual, I _have_ scored; but my advantage won't be striking perhaps till I have sent the blow home. What I appeal to you, as a father, at present to do"--he continued broadly to demonstrate--"is to nerve my arm. I look to you to see me through."
"Through this most important transaction. Through the speculation of which you've been the barely dissimulated subject. I've brought you here to receive an impression, and I've brought you, even more, to make one."