“You believed what she said about me, of course,” said I.
“I neither believed nor disbelieved,” she answered indifferently, as she rose to go. “It does not interest me.”
“Come here,” said I.
I waited until she reluctantly joined me at the window. I pointed to the steeple of the church across the way. “You could as easily throw down that steeple by pushing against it with your bare hands,” I said to her, “as 'they,' whoever they are, could put me down. They might take away my money. But if they did, they would only be giving me a lesson that would teach me how more easily to get it back. I am not a bundle of stock certificates or a bag of money. I am—here,” and I tapped my forehead.
She forced a faint, scornful smile. She did not wish me to see her belief of what I said.
“You may think that is vanity,” I went on. “But you will learn, sooner or later, the difference between boasting and simple statement of fact. You will learn that I do not boast. What I said is no more a boast than for a man with legs to say, 'I can walk.' Because you have known only legless men, you exaggerate the difficulty of walking. It's as easy for me to make money as it is for some people to spend it.”
It is hardly necessary for me to say I was not insinuating anything against her people. But she was just then supersensitive on the subject, though I did not suspect it. She flushed hotly. “You will not have any cause to sneer at my people on that account hereafter,” she said. “I settled that to-day.”
“I was not sneering at them,” I protested. “I wasn't even thinking of them. And—you must know that it's a favor to me for anybody to ask me to do anything that will please you—Anita!”
She made a gesture of impatience. “I see I'd better tell you why I did not go with them to-day. I insisted that they give back all they have taken from you. And when they refused, I refused to go.”
“I don't care why you refused, or imagined you refused,” said I. “I am content with the fact that you are here.”