“I might like to have you like me, Martha,” Harlan ventured, and there was a quiet wistfulness about him then that touched her. “I might like it better than you know.”
She looked at him gravely. “I do like you,” she said. “I like you anyhow; but even if I didn’t, I’d like you because you’re Dan’s brother.”
Harlan sighed, but contrived a smile to accompany his sigh. “Yes; I’ve always understood that, Martha; and you’re not at all peculiar in your preference. Not only you and grandmother, but everybody else likes Dan much better than me.”
“And yet,” Martha said, a smouldering glow in her kind eyes, “you tell me that everybody’s laughing at him.”
“Haven’t you heard so yourself?”
“Yes, I have,” she cried angrily. “But how can they, if they like him?”
“Isn’t it plain enough? They like him because he’s a democratic, friendly soul, and they laugh at him because he’s so absurd about the Ornaby farm.”
“And you think he’s got to do the whole thing absolutely alone?”
“Why, no,” Harlan said, correcting her lightly, “I don’t think he’s going to be able to do the whole thing at all. He’ll get part way and then of course he’ll have to quit, because his money’ll give out. What he has left may last him a year or even longer, if he keeps on just doing with his little gang of darkies and himself.”
“And in the meantime, he’ll also keep on being a ‘laughing stock?’ That’s what you said, didn’t you?”