"I'd like to bluff him at his own game, the old slave-driver," he continued.
"Oh don't! don't!" she quavered.
She was, in truth, anxiously awaiting the moment when Dr. Webster should see fit to give his attention to the stranger.
He laughed outright.
"Why, what makes you so afraid of him? He doesn't beat you, does he?"
"It isn't that. It's the personality of the man, added to force of habit."
"Well, Mr. Strowbridge," cried Dr. Webster, suddenly addressing the youth, "what are you doing for this world? I hear you are just out of Harvard University. University men never amount to a row of pins."
Strowbridge flushed and bit his lip, but controlled himself.
"Never amount to a row of pins," roared the doctor, irritated by the haughty lifting of the young man's head. "Don't even get any more book-learning now, I understand. Nothing but football and boat-racing. Think that would make a fortune in a new country? Got any money of your own?"
"My father, since you ask me, is a rich man—as well as a gentleman," said Strowbridge, with the expression of half-frightened anger of the righteously indignant, who knows that he has not the advantages of cool wit and scathing repartee, and, in consequence, may lose his head. "He inherited his money, and was not forced to go to a new country and become a savage," he blurted out.