"You're very flattering—but my position is that of an employé—at a salary which would hardly command your services."
"You can be eyes and ears and hands to her. If I had your position, I'd"—one of his great hands rose suddenly into the air—"crunch up this neighborhood. With her resources she could get all the power." His hand fell again, and he removed his body from two of the three chairs, shifting himself with easy indolent strength. "Then you'd have it all in your own control."
"She'd have it in her own control, you must mean," said I.
"Come, you're a man!" he mocked me. But he was looking at me closely, too—and rather inquisitively, I thought.
"Since you've met her often, I thought you might understand better than that." To answer him in his own coin, I infused into my tone a contempt which I hoped would annoy him.
He was not annoyed; he was amused. In the insolence of his strength he mocked at me—at Jenny through me—at me through Jenny. Yet, pervading it all, there was revealed an interest—a curiosity—about her that agreed ill with his assumed contemptuousness.
"She's given you her idea of herself—and you've absorbed it. She thinks she's another Nick Driver—and you're sure of it! It's all flim-flam, Austin."
"Have it your own way," said I meekly. "It's no affair of mine what you choose to think."
"Well, that's a more liberal sentiment than one generally hears in this neighborhood."
He rose and stretched himself, clenching his big fists in the air over his head. "At any rate she's told me I may take my walks about here as usual. I'll drop in and have a pipe with you some day."