"You've been shuffing for me––don't stop your work; I like watching it––a month," observed Mr. Carrigan.

"Yes, sir," his chauffeur assented pleasantly.

Mr. Carrigan placed his thumbs in the pockets of his white waistcoat and surveyed the sunny immaculateness of his model garage. Through the wide doors at either end were visible close-shaven, vivid lawns and terraces, with to the east the violet and purple vistas of the Hudson; the whole scene clear-cut in the bright noon.

"Whenever I've had a notion to go, the automobile has forthcame. You haven't told me something was smashed, when you didn't feel like shuffing. You haven't grafted me for new parts and absorbed the price. You haven't gone joy-riding with it. And you haven't mixed whiskey with gasoline."

"Not yet," confirmed the chauffeur, with unruffled amiability.

A wide Hibernian smile overspread his employer's face.

"Not yet," he echoed drily, and watched the placing of a spark plug.

"I thought you young when I first got you, but––how old may you be, Hammond?"

"Twenty-four, sir."

"Ah! But you haven't broken down yet, and you haven't wanted to send the automobile to a repair shop; I guess you're old enough."

Hammond straightened up, shutting the bonnet. He wore overalls, his sleeves were rolled high, and there was a black streak of oil across his forehead, but his blue eyes flashed their direct young smile at the older man.

"I believe when you hired a driver, sir, you wanted him to drive your car; and keep it fit to drive. That's only business. I don't think you'll need a repair shop yet awhile."

"For what do you say driver instead of shuffer?" inquired Mr. Carrigan curiously.

"Because it's easier," came the laconic truth.

Mr. Carrigan slapped his ample hands on his thighs with a laugh that jarred the garage.

"Good enough! You're the first one ever I heard confess it, Hammond. Now go get cleaned up, will you? I'm going down to the station to fetch my daughter from Europe. And you'll have a lot of driving her around, hereafter; that's why I'm glad I've got a man who won't break her neck."

"Yes, sir."

"I'll wait here; the garage is the most cheerful place in the house. By which it isn't in the house by half a block."

Hammond laughed, turning to run lightly up the stairs to the other floor of his domain. Mr. Carrigan sat down, lit a cigar with fine disregard of his own orders concerning smoking in the garage, and idly listened to the sounds from above. There was much splashing of water, there was the thump of an elusive soap-ball, and the dull thud of garments flung boy-like at a chair. The listener's expression grew reminiscent.

"A nice kid!" he mused half aloud. "And when I push the button, he comes. Me remembering that at his age Mike Carrigan was a canal-boat hand on the Erie!" He bent a meditative gaze on the huge, gaudy touring car. "He, too, with the science to run that. Money's great!"

There was a final clatter upstairs.

"Ready, sir," announced the khaki-clad Hammond, reappearing.

Mr. Carrigan abstractedly allowed himself to be put into the dust-coat his chauffeur produced from beneath a seat, and to be shut into the red-cushioned interior.

"The station," he directed, as Hammond drew on gauntlets with a certain business-like verve.

At the railway station, a rococo effort in made stone, a number of cars and carriages were waiting when they arrived. The train was late, it seemed. Mr. Carrigan got out and stood on the platform, a bulky figure of wealth; his duster pushed back and his thumbs in the pockets of the snowy waistcoat with its double watch-chain, his motor cap set solidly on his reddish-gray head. But he was plainly nervous, none the less.

A long whistle down the line, a roar and rush, as the train came in at last. A number of people descended; finally a French maid, a thin, stiff lady of middle age, and behind them––

Mr. Carrigan was half-way down the platform when the whirlwind of chiffons fell upon him.

"Daddy, Daddy!" cried a clear, girlish voice in a very ecstasy; eager arms were about his neck, eager gray eyes looked into his. "Daddy, it is so good to see you!"

"And I wondered would I be afraid of you," he confessed.

"Of me!"

"After your foreign schooling, Gillian girl––"

She kissed him in public, unashamed; a dimpled, auburn-haired girl with his own sane clearness of regard. Her maid and trunks were being put in a depot wagon. Mrs. Ivor, Gillian's former governess and the present monitor of Mr. Carrigan's household, advanced to give a limp hand in greeting.

"We had a shocking voyage," she vouchsafed, rebuke in every dry accent. "Gillian, I would be more self-contained in public; consider these people, your neighbors!"

"Bother the people," muttered Mr. Carrigan.

But he entered the car with constraint, glancing about him. Gillian also was subdued, though she left her hand in his. The chauffeur closed the door upon them, and some glint of empathy in the momentary encounter of his blue eyes prompted his employer to transgress again.

"Gillian, this is Hammond, the best shuffer I've had," he said. "He'll be driving you all over, I guess."

Gillain bent her head in coolly gracious acknowledgment.

"Really––" faltered Mrs. Ivor, rigid.

But the matter-of-fact salute Hammond gave and his unperturbed return to his seat inspired the retort needed.

"I guess she's got to know her own servants," drawled Mr. Carrigan.

It was on a drive a month later, that Gillian Carrigan first consciously noticed the servant in question.

"I'm sick of smooth roads; we'll go through the Highlands," Mr. Carrigan declared, at breakfast. "Come mountain climbing in the automobile, Gillian girl."

"Lovely!" she approved, a morning brightness as she sat opposite in one of the ornate and ruffled gowns he delighted to see her wear at all hours.

"Mr. Van Camp suggested he might call this morning," reminded Mrs. Ivor delicately. "Such a desirable family, my dear."

"Let him call; I'm going with Daddy," Gillian retorted. "I should rather have him than a dozen Howard Van Camps."

But she colored, and Mr. Carrigan sighed while he smiled, looking at her.

The drive was through a series of wild slopes and gorges, over narrow roads that plunged recklessly along the edge of precipices. Glimpses of the azure Hudson lying far below, the splash of brooks in dark gullies, the new sense of adventure, went to the young girl's head and set her pulses flying.

"I want to go that way!" she cried, at last. "Where that squirrel ran, Daddy."

"Down there, Hammond," called her father, his arm around her.

The road aside pitched sharply to a long incline, twisting through the forest. Half a mile down it, Hammond infringed the rules of etiquette for the first time.

"I think, sir," he remarked pleasantly, "that you had better get out and take Miss Carrigan."

"It's not safe?" demanded Mr. Carrigan, startled.

"It's safe enough here, sir, but the brakes won't hold her, and there's a short turn at the bottom."

"Something's broke?"

"Oh, no; just her brakes aren't strong enough."

"I paid for––"

A smile touched the chauffeur's lips.

"For varnish and upholstery, sir. Would you get out?"

They were grinding slowly down the hill, a deep gorge beside them. A few hundred feet farther on the narrow road made an abrupt bend, almost a right angle, with a sheer fall of cliff on either side.

"Why can't we keep on like this?" Gillian asked. "We are moving slowly."

The corner of a dark-blue eye looked back at her.

"Because the car may be too long to turn down there without stopping to back, and I can't stop. Mr. Carrigan, I can't help because I've got my foot on the brake that don't lock, and I'm steering—will you step out and lift down Miss Carrigan?"

The feat was simple at that pace. Mr. Carrigan was out in an instant and holding up his arms to Gillian. But she leaned over the front seat with an impulsive cry:

"Why, you would be killed! Daddy, Hammond will go over the cliff!"

Her silk coat, her floating perfumed veils, brushed the young chauffeur as he half turned to answer. His laughing, boyish eyes encountered her straight gaze of horrified admiration.

"Thanks, but I think not," he said. "Will you go, please?"

Mr. Carrigan swung her to the ground, then ran after his sliding car.

"Get off, man," he commanded tersely. "I'll not have you murdered with the thing! Get off."

Hammond shook his dark head; the machine was moving faster as the incline grew suddenly more steep.

"No danger," he called back. "If she won't make it, I'll try dropping the jack before the wheels and blocking her."

"What does he mean?" gasped Gillian, gathering up her blue muslin ruffles to pursue her father. "Daddy, don't let him!"

He caught her hand soothingly.

"I don't seem to have much to say, Gillian girl. I'm thinking he'll manage."

Hand in hand they stood watching as the car neared the turn and slid grating around it. A rear wheel slipped over the verge, sending a shower of earth rattling down. Gillian cried out, but the big machine struggled ahead onto the road.

"He's made it––he's stopped!" ejaculated Mr. Carrigan. "Come on, Gillian."

When they reached the car Hammond had opened the door and was waiting demurely in his seat.

"You nearly got over," said his employer grimly. "And if you'd tried blocking her on the bend, you'd have got over sure."

"We couldn't back, and there was no room to turn around; it was the only way, sir," returned the placid Hammond.

"You might have been killed," Gillian panted, flushed, her lips apart, her auburn curls tumbled under her blue hood. "Oh, and I brought us here!"

Their glances met again.

"I think it would have blocked," said the chauffeur. "Straight on, Mr. Carrigan?"

Which was rather a superfluous question.

The big castle-house was very gay during the weeks that followed. There were visitors from the neighborhood, chiefly families with marriageable sons. There were house parties composed of Gillian's former schoolmates, or people she had met while travelling. On such occasions it became Mr. Carrigan's habit to repair to the garage.

"I've made the plenty of money; that's my part," he explained to his chauffeur, one afternoon. "Now I'll keep out of sight until the little girl's settled. I'm not for society; when I married Gillian's mother, I was mighty proud over owning a canal-boat and four mules."

"Which is more than some others own," commented Hammond blithely, dashing a pail of water over the red wheels.

Mr. Carrigan chuckled.

"Meaning the young fellows in pretty clothes running after Gillian? That's truth. But let her take her pick; I'm rich enough to pay for it. And I'm thinking the pick's most made."

A bee hummed in the door and out again. Mr. Carrigan blew a whiff of tobacco––cheap tobacco––smoke into the summer air and watched the blue ring dilate and drift.

"The first pipe I've smoked in years," he mused. "The aromer would poison that Turk smoking-room up there. Yes, I'm keeping in the rear until my girl gets everything fixed as she wants. I'm what Van Camp calls plebeian. And it's no trick, either"––his jaw set defiantly as he looked at the other––"for when she's married I'll still keep out. She's an aristocrat by bringing up; let her marry one like herself, and I'll not spoil their parlor by sitting in it."

Hammond, once more in overalls, stood up and ran his fingers through his black hair, pushing back the short, thick clusters; but said nothing.

"Can't you speak?" demanded his employer testily.

"If I'm not just a background to think against––"

"You're not."

"Well, then––does Miss Carrigan like that?"

"She knows nothing about it, man! It's to fix her happy I'm working. But whiles––"

The pause was so long that the chauffeur quietly picked up a sponge and proceeded with his work.

"But whiles I'm thinking I'll be lonesome." Mr. Carrigan rose, knocking the ashes out of the pipe. "I like riding in that automobile better than anything else idle I've struck. When I leave here I'll give Gillian a new car and a new shuffer––will you come tour America driving for me, Hammond?"

"I'll be glad to, sir," accepted Hammond, gravely cordial.

They looked at each other across the red bonnet; the younger man straight and slim in his blue working dress, the sponge still in his hand; the older man painfully immaculate in an afternoon costume suggestive of church.

"Here," said Mr. Carrigan, holding out the cold pipe. "Find a shelf for that where I can get it handy when I run in."

July passed into August. When September approached, Mrs. Ivor advised a month at Atlantic City for Gillian.

"Howard Van Camp's people have a cottage there," she intimated. "Really, Mr. Carrigan, as he is so very eligible and so much interested in Miss Carrigan, it is only fair to her––"

"How much do you want?" asked Mr. Carrigan, reaching for a check-book.

So it was arranged. Gillian protested that she did not want to go, only to be overruled.

The day after the ladies' departure, Hammond came to his employer in the huge, appalling library.

"I should like a vacation, sir," he stated. "I have a substitute who is safe, if you care to try him."

Mr. Carrigan put down his newspaper. The place gave a formality to conversation with the man whom he saw every day in the pleasant sans-gêne of the garage.

"You want to see your folks?" he hazarded.

Hammond shook his head.

"I have no folks living, sir."

"Well, you've earned it," was the reluctant concession. "Take a month, if you want it."

He reached for the inevitable check-book, but Hammond made a quick gesture of dissent.

"I want it without pay," he declared.

Mr. Carrigan stared, stupefied.

"You're leaving?" he doubted.

"Not if you care to take me back when I come, sir. But––"

"Well?"

The chauffeur's direct young eyes met the other's.

"Do we stand square now, Mr. Carrigan? Count for count, if we broke would we break even?"

"We would."

"Thank you, sir. Then we're both free. I'll be back on time, if you want me."

Bewildered, with a strange sense of imminent blankness, Mr. Carrigan got on his feet.

"I'll want you," he predicted, and held out his hand.

Hammond moved, coloring, but gave the clasp firmly and naturally. He had reached the door when the other's voice halted him:

"You've got a lot of learning; Hammond; where did you get it?"

"I had a high school education, sir; that means a good deal in New York, especially if one's fond of reading. Afterward I had my course in a school of motor driving and construction."

"I taught myself to read," said Mr. Carrign drily, "and stopped there; barring what I picked up. Good luck to your pleasuring."

The next month was dull at the house. The substitute driver was perfectly competent––Hammond had attended to that––but he refused to hear the title of driver, and always corrected his employer's use of shuffer by murmuring under his breath "shofure." On the single occasion of Mr. Carrigan's venturing into the garage, he was received glacially and met with the insinuation that no inspection was necessary or agreeable.

But at last Gillian, Mrs. Ivor, and their attendant train came back.

"Did you have a good time?" inquired Mr. Carrigan, at their meeting.

"I love you," whispered Gillian, both arms about his neck. "I love you."

He patted her auburn curls, not daring to ask if she were engaged to Van Camp, lest it spoil the golden hour.

But after dinner she came to him in the library, shutting out every one else. It was the first of October now; a bright fire burned on the hearth, warming the ungenial gorgeousness of the room and shining on Gillian in her pretty evening-gown as she sat in a low chair by her father.

"Did you see much of young Van Camp?" asked Mr. Carrigan, when suspense ceased to be a respite.

"Yes, Daddy."

"And––and did he come to time?"

She turned to lean her arm upon his knee, looking up into his face. A strange, vivid unrest glowed through her like a wavering flame, firing eyes and cheeks and lips.

"Do you want me to marry Mr. Van Camp, dear?"

"He's your kind," he hesitated, with a gulp. "Sure."

"He is not," she flashed. "Not that! What is the use of pretending? Daddy, I am your daughter; the daughter of a working-man, not a fine gentleman. Can't you see I am not like his sisters? Why"––she extended a bare white arm––"look at my very hand; smooth and dimpled and soft, yes, but is it like their long, slender fingers? It is your hand, and I'm your girl. And I'm glad! Daddy dear, what would we do with Howard Van Camp, we two? Where would he fit in?"

"I'd pay the bills, Gillian girl; and I'd get out."

She laid her head on his knee.

"Daddy, I want us to be happy, you and I. My dear, my dear, how we could live; you and I, and the right man!"

There were no words to match that thought. After an instant the French clock on the mantel struck eight, chiming across the silence. As the last note fell, some one knocked.

"Come in," bade the master.

"Hammond would wish to see you, sir; he has got back," was the stately announcement.

"Fine!" ejaculated Mr. Carrigan, sitting up animatedly. "Have him in, and be quick. There's a shuffer, Gillian girl! I've missed the boy––  Why, Gillian!"

Her eyes still on his, the lambent quiver had passed over her face, the scarlet rose over her forehead.

"Yes," she breathed, as Hammond came into the room.

It was a moment before Mr. Carrigan looked at his former chauffeur.

"So while you were shuffling for me, you were courting my daughter, Hammond," he said.

"No, sir, never," Hammond retorted quickly. "I never spoke or showed one thought to her while I was in your employ. I never have used or repeated anything learned from you or in your house. I never saw her alone until this month. I loved her; but I might have done that from passing her on the road. I was loyal to you, until last month we broke even. You agreed that I was free then?"

"I did."

"Thank you"––his dark head lifted with a boyish dignity. "I spent my vacation at Atlantic City, sir, and took my chance with the other men your daughter met there. Ask her if I did not start there, not here."

"And you licked Van Camp?"

"I––hope so," said Hammond softly, his gentle gaze on the girl. "But she will not come to me without your consent. We're trying to play the game, sir. If I've not held back because I had no money, it was because I knew the other men hadn't any either."

Still Gillian's head rested on her father's knee, still her earnest eyes searched his face, though her rich color varied in answer to each varying tone in her lover's voice.

"And if I've made any unfair use of what I learned in the garage," the younger man concluded simply, "it was only in remembering that you didn't dislike me, sir, and didn't expect much happiness from the other marriage. If Mr. Van Camp had won, I should have come back to drive for you, as I promised."

"Home, Daddy," whispered Gillian. "Really a home. Oh, Daddy––you and I and Phil!"

Mr. Carrigan straightened himself in the chair and held out his hand.

"I guess you'd better bring my pipe over from the garage to the house, Phil Hammond," he pronounced. "I guess, since I'll not be getting out now, that Turk smoking-room had better be getting used to you and me. I'm suited, all right, with my own kind."