"Yes, they work hard, a good many of 'em, but there's worse than working hard, and we're pretty peaceful and contented with our lot here on the island, the most of us. You see I'm trying to look on both sides."
"I see you're trying to be the fair and just person you always are, Phosie. You always put yourself in the place of others, but I don't see that you put many in your place."
"I can't see any difference."
"Well, it's this way. You think to yourself what should I like if I were so-and-so, not what would so-and-so like if she were I."
Miss Phosie shook her head. Such fine distinctions were beyond her. "Well, I'm sure I'm much obliged to you, Mr. Williams, for your advice. I'll speak to father, and I'll talk to Ora, and maybe we can send her away for a visit. She might like the change. I see her coming now, and I guess this is as good a time as any other. Don't you go, Mr. Williams, we'll just slip upstairs where we won't be disturbed." And Miss Phosie went out to bid Ora follow her to the upper room which they shared together. Miss Phenie must have a room to herself, so it was Miss Phosie who had always had Ora for a room-mate.
Luther Williams leaned back in his favorite place. "What should I do if it were my daughter?" he soliloquized. "I'd give her to the man she loved if he were half a decent fellow. Who knows the curse of money better than I? Yet—" His thoughts flew to Gwen who had lately said she would choose her father to be like him. Suppose it were such a girl as Gwen, could he condemn her to poverty, the anxious eating cares that insufficient means would bring? Could he see that untroubled face growing lined and care-worn? those slender hands roughened and hardened by work? that sunny nature saddened or embittered? He shook his head. "It wouldn't do. All of one thing or all of the other isn't right. There must be judicious mixing. I'd sooner see her overboard than wrecking her happiness by marrying for money alone, and I'd sooner see her earning her comfortable little salary for a lifetime than to have her working her fingers to the bone for a careless indifferent husband. There must be judicious mixing and then—"
He sat a long time thinking. So long that Miss Phosie, returning to prepare supper, found him still sitting there. "I've talked with Ora," she said. "And I think she's willing to go, especially as Manny is talking of going off sword-fishing. He's never been but once, but perhaps if he gets fairly started he'll keep on. Almira never encouraged him to go, fearing something would happen to him, but Ora thinks he'll go if he hears she is going away. She's as good as said she'd promised to marry him, and she sees he'd ought to make a start. If he does well, I don't see any harm in encouraging him, do you?"
"If he does well by all means let them be happy," returned Mr. Williams emphatically. "It might be the making of Manny, and it would be a comfort to Mrs. Green to have Ora with her when the boy goes fishing. Yes, yes, Phosie, by all means. Happiness isn't so plentiful that we can afford to stand in the way of its coming to others."
"No, it isn't so plentiful," replied Miss Phosie wistfully. "I—I wish, Mr. Williams, we could do more to bring it to you. It has seemed to me lately that you've not been quite like yourself."
He gave a short laugh. "Don't worry about me, Phosie. Nobody has done as much as you have. Think of the home I have here, and the kindness you have shown me. I'd have to go pretty far to find anyone else so ready to mend and darn for me, to make the kind of preserves I like best, and to cook things as I like them. No, indeed, Phosie, my own sister could not do more to make her old brother happy. 'I was a stranger and you took me in,' without a word, and from that very first day when you saw I enjoyed your gingerbread you've baked it for me regularly." He laughed pleasantly and a faint pink suffused Miss Phosie's pale cheek.