“But she went down.”
“That wouldn’t matter. The underwriters would have an opportunity for paying up—probably rather more than she was worth. Considering my parentage, it’s curious I have no business talent.”
“Your father and mine have had dealings for a long time, haven’t they?”
“They have stood by each other for a good many years. It looks as if you and I were destined to be friends; but I sometimes think you don’t understand just what your friendship is to me.”
“Of course, we are good friends,” Ruth said carelessly; “but you have plenty others.”
“I have a host of acquaintances; but you’re different from the rest. That doesn’t sound very original, but it’s what I feel. There’s an intangible something that’s very fine about you; something rare and old-fashioned that belongs more to the quiet corners of the New England States than to our mushroom cities. It comes of long and careful cultivation, and isn’t to be found in places that spring up in a night.”
“Both my father’s and my mother’s people lived frugally in a very provincial Eastern town.”
“It proves my point. I know the kind of place: a ‘Sleepy Hollow,’ where nothing happens that hasn’t happened in the same way before, left as it was when the tide of American life poured West across the plains. One can imagine your mother’s people being bound by old traditions and clinging to the customs of more serious days. That, I think, is how you got your gracious calm, your depth of character, and a sweetness I’ve found in no one else.”
Ruth rose with a smiling rebuke, and firmly turned the conversation into another channel.
“Yes, I know,” Aynsley said despondently. “I’m not to talk like that. When I play the good-natured idiot people applaud, but they put me down smartly when I speak the truth.”