"I'm glad you've found what suits you, at last. It isn't exactly the line I'd have thought a girl such as you would choose. You're sure you are not making a mistake?"
"Quite," said Jane.
"I should think you'd prefer marriage—and a home—and a social circle—and all that," ventured David.
"I'll probably not marry."
"No. You'd hardly take a doctor."
"The only one I'd want I can't get," said Jane.
She wished to shock David, and she saw with pleasure that she had succeeded. Indeed so shocked was he that in a few minutes he took leave. And as he passed from her sight he passed from her mind.
Victor Dorn described Davy Hull's inaugural address as "an uninteresting sample of the standard reform brand of artificial milk for political infants." The press, however, was enthusiastic, and substantial people everywhere spoke of it as having the "right ring," as being the utterance of a "safe, clean man whom the politicians can't frighten or fool." In this famous speech David urged everybody who was doing right to keep on doing so, warned everybody who was doing wrong that they would better look out for themselves, praised those who were trying to better conditions in the right way, condemned those who were trying to do so in the wrong way. It was all most eloquent, most earnest. Some few people were disappointed that he had not explained exactly what and whom he meant by right and by wrong; but these carping murmurs were drowned in the general acclaim. A man whose fists clenched and whose eyes flashed as did David Hull's must "mean business"—and if no results came of these words, it wouldn't be his fault, but the machinations of wicked plutocrats and their political agents.
"Isn't it disgusting!" exclaimed Selma, reading an impassioned paragraph aloud to Victor Dorn. "It almost makes me despair when I see how people—our sort of people, too—are taken in by such guff. And they stand with their empty picked pockets and cheer this man, who's nothing but a stool pigeon for pickpockets."
"It's something gained," observed Victor tranquilly, "when politicians have to denounce the plutocracy in order to get audiences and offices. The people are beginning to know what's wrong. They read into our friend Hull's generalities what they think he ought to mean—what they believe he does mean. The next step is—he'll have to do something or they'll find him out."