"Come! come!" the father rallied him. "Time, time!"
He gripped the hand that was gripping his and swung it free of the table with a kindly shake. All the effective charm of his personality which he never wasted, the charm that could develop out of the mask to gain an end when the period of listening was over, was in play.
"She excited the opposition of the strength in you," he said. "You ask what did she mean? It is hard to tell what a woman means, but I judge that she meant that it was not in her blood to marry a fellow who went about fighting duels and breaking arms. She would like a more peaceful sort; and, yes, anything that came into her mind leaped out and you were mystified by her strange exclamation!"
"Perhaps. I suppose that may be it. It was just myself, just my devil!"
Jack assented limply.
"Time! time! All this will pass."
Jack could not answer that commonplace with one of his own, that it would not pass; he could only return the pressure when his father, rising and coming around the table, slipped his arm about the son in a demonstration of affection which was like opening the gate to a new epoch in their relations.
"And you would have killed Leddy! You could have broken that Mexican in two! I should like to have seen that! So would the ancestor!" said the father, giving Jack a hug.
"Yes, but, father, that was the horror of it!"
"Not the power to do it—no! I mean, Jack, that in this world it is well to be strong."
"And you think that I am no longer a weakling?" Jack asked strangely; "that I carried out your instructions when you sent me away?"