“What for?” cried Bart. “I say, Helm, what’s the use of being so devilish personal and unpleasant? Why stir things up and make trouble for yourself? Why not join our party and jog along quietly and comfortably?”
Helm laughed good-humoredly. “Let’s say it’s because I was born a contentious cuss and can’t change my nature. No, Hollister—you don’t want me at your house.”
Hollister was convinced. But his father’s orders had been positive, had made no provision for failure. He persisted as best he could: “You can’t think we’re trying to buy you with a dinner?”
“I think I’m too good-natured not to sell out for a dinner—and that sort of thing—if I put myself in the way of temptation.”
“What rot! You’ll come? Nell Clearwater will be terribly disappointed. She took quite a shine to you.”
George Helm laughed. “I shave myself, Hollister. I see myself every morning. I’m not for the ladies, nor they for me.”
“Oh, hell! A woman doesn’t care what a man looks like. They’d rather a man wouldn’t be handsome, so he’ll think about them instead of about himself. The way to please a woman is to help her to think of nothing but herself.”
“I’m not a ladies’ man,” said Helm.
Hollister argued—not unskillfully, because he liked Helm. But George was not to be moved. He had not set out from the depth of the valleys for the heights without so obvious a precaution as taking the measure of his weaknesses. He knew that the one bribe he could not resist was the social bribe—that his one chance for success in the career he had mapped out for himself lay in having no friends among those he must fight. And in the nearest rank of them were Hollister, the railway giant of the State, and Judge Powers, his brother-in-law and closest judicial agent. A day or so later, when he, walking up Main Street, saw Clara Hollister and Eleanor Clearwater driving toward him in a phaeton, he abruptly turned to inspect a window display. He shivered and jumped ridiculously when he heard Clara’s voice at his elbow.
“You interested in millinery!” Miss Hollister was saying laughingly.