“Do you by any chance happen to know that your son is in love?”
“Yes. Where is the girl?”
“It isn't the girl. It's just girl.”
“Oh, hell! Quit vaudevilling!”
“There is no girl who is the girl. There never was. There doesn't have to be any!”
Quite obviously this man was a lunatic—with the eyes of a particularly sane person. If there was no girl Tom was in no danger of marriage. A million for not marrying an undesirable person, yes, but a million for a daughter-in-law, when Tom was not in love!
“Only,” thought Mr. Merriwether, “in case I have the selecting of her! And if I pick her I don't have to pay.”
“And yet,” said the man, musingly, “Tom loves her!”
Mr. Merriwether's perplexity was fast rising to the dignity of anger.
“If there had been a girl of Tom's own class,” the man went on, as if talking to himself, “why shouldn't he have been seen in public with her?” Mr. Merriwether was listening now with his soul. “And if this girl were of the other class—that financial geniuses, alas! sometimes have to accept for daughters-in-law—a nice, vivacious chorus-lady, or a refined Reno graduate, or worse—she would have insisted on being seen in public with Tom, to show her power and to raise the paternal bid-price for a trip to Europe—alone!”