"We take off our hats to the blood in a man's veins, if 'tis blue enough—not to the man."
"And hate the man all the time, maybe—and so act a lie when we cap to him and pretend what isn't true."
"You go too far," declared Nathan.
"I say that we hate anything that's stronger than we are," continued his brother. "We hate brains that's stronger than our own, or pockets that's deeper. The only folk that we smile upon honestly be those we reckon greater fools than ourselves."
Vivian laughed loud at this.
"What a sharp tongue the man hath!" he exclaimed. "But he's wrong, for all that. For if I only smiled at them who had less brains than myself, I should go glum from morn till night."
"Don't say it, father!" cried his wife. "Too humble-minded you be, and always will be."
"'Tis only a very wise man that knows himself for a fool, all the same," declared Nathan. "As for Humphrey here, maybe 'tis because men hate brains bigger than their own, as he says, that he hasn't got a larger circle of friends himself. We all know he's the cleverest man among us."
Humphrey was about to speak again, but restrained the inclination and turned to his nieces who now appeared.
Polly lacked character and existed as the right hand of her mother; but May took physically after Vivian, and represented his first joy and the apple of his eye. She was a girl of great breadth and bulk every way. The beauty of youth still belonged to her clean white and red face, and her yellow hair was magnificent; but it required no prophet to foretell that poor May, when her present colt-like life of physical activity decreased, must swiftly grow too vast for her own comfort or the temptation of the average lover.