"The way to get him off that ladder is to give him another," said Jane.
A long silence, the girl letting her father thresh the matter out in his slow, thorough way. Finally her young impatience conquered her restraint. "Well—what do you think, popsy?" inquired she.
"That I've got about as smart a gel as there is in Remsen City," replied he.
"Don't lay it on too thick," laughed she.
He understood why she was laughing, though he did not show it. He knew what his much-traveled daughter thought of Remsen City, but he held to his own provincial opinion, nevertheless. Nor, perhaps, was he so far wrong as she believed. A cross section of human society, taken almost anywhere, will reveal about the same quantity of brain, and the quality of the mill is the thing, not of the material it may happen to be grinding.
She understood that his remark was his way of letting her know that he had taken her suggestion under advisement. This meant that she had said enough. And Jane Hastings had made herself an adept in the art of handling her father—an accomplishment she could by no means have achieved had she not loved him; it is only when a woman deeply and strongly loves a man that she can learn to influence him, for only love can put the necessary sensitiveness into the nerves with which moods and prejudices and whims and such subtle uncertainties can be felt out.
The next day but one, coming out on the front veranda a few minutes before lunch time she was startled rather than surprised to see Victor Dorn seated on a wicker sofa, hat off and gaze wandering delightedly over the extensive view of the beautiful farming country round Remsen City. She paused in the doorway to take advantage of the chance to look at him when he was off his guard. Certainly that profile view of the young man was impressive. It is only in the profile that we get a chance to measure the will or propelling force behind a character. In each of the two main curves of Dorn's head—that from the top of the brow downward over the nose, the lips, the chin and under, and that from the back of the head round under the ear and forward along the lower jaw—in each of these curves Dorn excelled.
She was about to draw back and make a formal entry, when he said, without looking toward her:
"Well—don't you think it would be safe to draw near?"
The tone was so easy and natural and so sympathetic—the tone of Selma Gordon—the tone of all natural persons not disturbed about themselves or about others—that Jane felt no embarrassment whatever. "I've heard you were very clever," said she, advancing. "So, I wanted to have the advantage of knowing you a little better at the outset than you would know me."