“I have heard people say that I have a glimmering notion of her merits,” said the other with a humorous gravity.
“Oh, I don’t mean pretty, and appealing, and with a good complexion, and all that—and I don’t mean you don’t spoil her most outrageously. I mean she’s got the oddest make-up for a modern American girl—she’s simple.”
“I don’t see anything odd about her—or simple!” Her father resented the adjectives with some warmth.
Dr. Melton answered with his usual free-handed use of language: “Well, it’s because, like everybody else old and spoiled and stodgy and settled, you’ve no eyes in your head when it comes to something important, like young people. Because they’re all smooth and rosy you think they’re all alike.” He rushed on, delivering himself as always with restless vivacity of gesture, “I tell you youth is one of the most wastefully ignored forces in the world! Talk about our neglecting to get the good out of our water-power! The way we shut off the capacity of youth to see things as they are, before it gets purblind with our own cowardly unreason—why, it’s as if we tried to make water run uphill instead of turning our mill-wheels with its natural energy.”
Judge Emery had listened to a word or two of this harangue and then had looked for and found his hat and coat, with which he had invested himself, and now stood ready for the street, one hand on the knob of the door. “Well, good-night to you,” he said pleasantly, as though the doctor were not speaking; “I’ll try to see you to-morrow.”
Dr. Melton jumped to his feet, laughing, ran across the room and caught at the other’s arm. “Don’t blame me. Much preaching of true gospel to deaf ears has made me yell all the time. You know you don’t really hear me, any more than anyone else.”
“There’s no doubt about that, I don’t!” acquiesced the Judge frankly.
“I will run on, though I know it never does any good. How’d I begin this time? What started me off? What was I saying?”
“You were saying that Lydia was queer and half-witted,” said the Judge moderately.
“I said she was simple—and by that I mean she’s so wise you’d better look out or she’ll find you out. She’s as dangerous as a bomb. She has a scent for essentials. She can tell ’em from all our flummery. I’m afraid of her, and I’m afraid for her! Remember the fate of the father in the Erl-King! He thought, I dare say, that he was doing a fine thing for his child, to hurry it along to a nice, warm, dry, safe place!”