“To see you? You know it.”
“No, I meant: Are you glad to be home?”
He looked thoughtful. “Well, I like New York; there isn’t any place else where you can see as much or do as much when you want to; it’s always a mighty fine show. And, besides, I like some people that live there.” He hesitated, continuing: “I—well, I do like some of the people in New York, but after all I’m glad to get home; I’m mighty glad.” Then he added, as a second thought: “In a way, that is.”
“In what way particularly, Dan?”
“Well, I do like some New York people,” he insisted, a little consciously;—“and I’m sorry to be away from them, but it’s pretty nice to get back here where you know ’most everybody you’re liable to meet. When you see a dog, for instance, you know who he belongs to and probably even his name—anyhow you probably do, if he belongs in your own part of town—and most likely the dog’ll know you, too, and stop and take some interest in you. Of course, I mean here you know everybody that is anybody;—naturally no one knows every soul in a town this big—and growin’ bigger every day.”
“Hurrah for you!” she cried, laughing at him again. “Why, you already talk like a member of the Chamber of Commerce, Dan.”
“How’s that?”
“Oh, you know the speeches they make: ‘A city of prosperity, a city of homes, a city that produces more wooden butter-dishes than all the rest of the country combined! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the finest city with the biggest future in the whole extent of these United States!’ ”
Dan laughed, but there came into his eyes a glint of enthusiasm that was wholly serious. “Well, I believe they’re not so far wrong, at that. In some ways I think myself it is about the finest city in the country. It kind of came over me when I got off the train yesterday and drove up home through these broad old streets with the big trees and big houses. It’s when you’ve been away a good while that you find out how you appreciate it when you get back. Harlan’s just the other way; he says when he’s been away and gets back, the place looks squalid to him. ‘Squalid’ was what he said. He makes me tired!”
“Does he?”