"What's wrong with the old man to-day, Bramsen? He looks as if he was going in for the deaf-and-dumb school; there's no getting a word out of him."
Bramsen sat for quite a while without answering. Then at last he said solemnly:
"It's my humble opinion, and that's none so humble after all, that there's a deal of what you might call contrapasts in this here world."
"Meaning to say?"
"It's plain enough. Folk that's got a retipation, they does all they can to lose it, and they that hasn't, why—there's no understanding them till they've got one."
Garner was still in the dark as to whither all this wisdom tended, and began absently slitting up a coffee-sack.
"Look you, Garner," Bramsen went on. "It's this way with the women: they've each their station here in life, as by the Lord appointed. Some gets married, and some goes school-teaching, or out in service, and such-like—and all that sort, they stick to their retipation; but the woman that goes about singing for money in a hat, her retipation's like a broken window—it's out and gone to bits and done with."
Garner laughed and looked inquiringly at the other.
"Now, do you understand, Garner, what's the trouble with Holm?"
"Oh, so that's what you're getting at, is it? Miss Holm wants to go on the stage."