“So it is for your sister you are selling yourself, is it?” asked the elder man. “Do you think she would be willing if she knew?”
“I’m not selling myself!” declared the young man, laughing a little nervously. “I haven’t signed any compact with my own blood amid a blaze of red fire.”
“Do you think your sister would approve if she knew?” persisted the Judge.
“Oh, but she won’t know!” was the answer. “I’ll admit she wouldn’t like it overmuch. She takes after father, and she has very strict ideas. You ought to hear her talk about the corruption of our politics!”
“Curtis,” said the Judge, earnestly, “if you take after your father, you ought to be able to look things in the face. That’s what I want you to do now. Have you any right to sacrifice yourself for your sister’s sake in a way she would not like?”
“I’m not sacrificing myself at all,” the young man declared. “I want some of the good things of life for myself. Besides, what do girls know about politics? They are always dreamy and impracticable. If they had their noses down to the grindstone of life for a little while it would sharpen their eyes, and they would see things differently.”
“It will be a sad world when women like your sister and your mother see things differently, as you put it,” the elder man retorted.
“If I want more money, I don’t admit that it is any of Martha’s business how I make it,” Van Dyne asserted. “I’ll let her have the spending of some of it—that will be her duty. I want her to have a summer in Europe, too. She knows that mother was abroad a whole year when she was eighteen.”
“I know that, too,” said the Judge. “It was in Venice that your father and I first met her; she was feeding the pigeons in front of St. Mark’s, and—”
The Judge paused a moment, and then he laid his hand on Van Dyne’s shoulder.