Green Fire

“Father, do go to bed! This is the fifth time I’ve been down since midnight, and I shall not warn you again. You may not need sleep, but I do.” And with a slight raising of the chin, Vera took up her position just inside the door of the electrical laboratory. Alan Cunningham glanced first at Vera, then at the clock, and last at James Ferguson, her incorrigible father. What a pity, he reflected sleepily, that nature had not made Vera a man instead of the whole-souled girl she was. With just a shade more firmness her commands might have been obeyed. And Alan, instead of trying to keep one eye half-open at three in the morning, should long ago have been blissfully asleep.“It is no use, Vera,” he said. “Since eight o’clock yesterday evening your father has been trying to do the impossible, and he won’t be happy till he does it. Run along to bye-bye like a good child. I shall stay with our revered Chief until one of us expires of insomnia.” “Alan!” she cried sharply, “you are asleep now. And father is too—he has been in exactly that position for the last three hours.” She hurried to