"Ah, then, I'll go my old way. I thought I might settle down some day and be a man," he whispered.
"Be a man first, Mr. Cobb, and settle down afterwards, is my advice to you," she responded.
"You are cruel, Miss Jarney—cruel—as cruel as all the other women of the rich, who make monkeys of we men folk," he said, despairingly.
"You must understand, Mr. Cobb, that I am not one 'of all the other women' of the rich, of whom you speak so slightingly," she replied, still keeping a good temper.
"Well, I guess not, Miss Jarney," he said, with a sneer, looking away from her. "I see, Miss Jarney—I am not blind—that you have set your cap for that young man in your father's office."
"You are disrespectful, Mr. Cobb; leave me at once," she replied, with some scorn for the first time exhibiting itself in her bearing. She arose and left him sitting there alone, with his pipe as his only comforting companion. After recovering from this jolt, as Star predicted, he gathered up his belongings, together with his valet, and vanished.
Imagine such a union of hearts! There are plenty of them founded upon the rock of riches. Yes; imagine it! See this young man Cobb, and know his worth! His face was like that of a well bred bull terrier, with a pipe between its lips, and a red cap upon its head. He had a pair of dull-gray pants on his hind legs, and they were turned up, with a pair of yellow shoes sticking out below the turn-ups. Around the middle of his body was a yellow belt fastened by a silver buckle, and above the belt was a silken white shirt, with turn-down collar, and around the collar was a red necktie, in which stuck a scarabee pin. And he called himself a man worthy of Edith.
He had been to Harvard, she to Vassar. She had learned to write a grammatical sentence and spell in the good old Websterian way. She could sing and play on the piano; and converse on the economic questions of the day with the perspicacity of a Stowe. She read the poets down through the catalogue of famous men and women, and the novelists of the class of Dickens and Hawthorne. She knew of the painters, the musicians, the theologians, and could talk intelligently on them all.
Him? He had learned a lot of things. He could flip the Harvard stroke with the ease of a Cook. He could make a touchdown without breaking sixteen ribs of an adversary. He could twirl the pigskin like an artist of the green cloth. He could take the long jump, or the long hike, with the grace of a giraffe. He could dance like a terpsichorian dame. He could drink whiskey, champagne and beer, smoke cigaretts, play cards. He could talk with the profundity of an ass and write with the imbecility of an ox. Yes, indeed, he had all the refinements of a college education—the kind confined to the male gender. The only virtue he had was his prospective inheritance from his father—money.
And he wanted Edith to marry him! Pooh!