"Wentworth, and some of the crowd! Oh, it will be
jolly, all right--damn Wentworth!"
Old John McNabb looked up from his papers as his daughter burst into
his private office and, rushing to his side, planted a kiss squarely
upon the top of his bald head. "I came in to tell you I'm twenty-one
to-day," she announced.
"Well, well, so ye are! Ye come into the world on the first of March,
true to the old sayin', an' ye've be'n boisterous ever since.
Twenty-one years old, an' tell me now, what have ye ever accomplished?
When I was your age I'd be'n livin' in the bush north of 60 for two
years, an' could do my fifty miles on snowshoes an' carry a pack."
"Maybe I can't do fifty miles a day on snowshoes, and I'm sure it isn't
my fault I don't live north of 60. But I'm in a hurry; I promised to
help Mr. Wentworth pick out a toboggan cap. I stopped in to remind you
that you promised me a fur coat on my twenty-first birthday."
The old man regarded her thoughtfully. "So I did, so I did," he
repeated absently. "This Wentworth, now--he's been kickin' around an
uncommon lot, lately. Tell me again, who is he? What does he do for a
livin'?"
"Why, he's a civil engineer--hydraulic work is his specialty. He has
been employed by some company that intended to put in a power plant of
some kind on Nettle River, and either the company broke up, or they
found the plan was not feasible, or something, and they abandoned it.
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