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 had made upon the spur of the moment, but it had just the right effect upon Doughty, who replaced his cigar hastily in his pocket with a docility quite unusual in him.

"I came to speak to you about Helen," he began.

"Ah, Helen," said Austin, as if Helen's problems had oddly enough been the last thought in his mind.

"My daughter," observed Mr. Doughty, "is in many ways a remarkable giri—"

"Well, Mr. Doughty," said Austin, genially, "we should not expect your child to be commonplace."

Mr. Doughty raised a deprecating hand, although, clearly, the remark was not distasteful to him. "No," he said, "you are wrong. What little success I have had in life has been due to luck, not to ability. Take, for example, my acquiring control of the C. T. & W.—"

"How interesting!" murmured Austin, at a time which his sound commercial training told him was the right moment. But he was thinking: a gardenia is not a common, accidental flower which might be picked by the cook's child out on a ramble. A gardenia is a deliberate, artificial, expensive, troublesome— He raised it and smelled the delicious