Avery glanced at his heavy, stubborn face, and decided not to reply. He was in no mood for controversy. And what good could it do, he said to himself, to argue with a mere lump of selfish egotism?
"That is an unusually pretty girl over by the piano," he said, in a tone of mild indifference which he hoped would serve as a period to the conversation.
"She's Tom Berton's girl," was the quick reply. "Berton's up to Albany most o' the time, with me. I represent our district. She's a nice little thing. She'll do anything you ask her to. I never see her equal for that. It's easier for her to do your way than it is to do her own. She likes to; so everybody likes her. I wish I had one like her; but my girls are as stubborn as mules. They won't drive, and they won't lead, and they'd ruther kick than eat. I don't know where they got it. Their mother wasn't half so bad that way, and the Lord knows it ain't in my family. The girl she's with is one o' mine. She looks like she could eat tenpenny nails. She might be just as pretty an' just as much liked as Ettie Berton, but she ain't. She's always growlin' about somethin'. I'll bet a dollar she'll growl about this when we get home. Ettie will think it was splendid. She'd have a good time at a funeral; but that girl of mine 'll get me to spend a dollar to come here and then she'll go home dissatisfied. It won't be up to what she expected.
"Things never are. She's always lookin' to find things some other way. Now, what would you do with a girl like that?" he asked suddenly. Then without waiting for a reply, he added, "I give her a good tongue lashin', an' as she always knows it's comin', she's got so she don't kick quite so much as she used to, but she just sets an' looks sullen like that. It makes me so mad I could—"
He did not finish his remark, but got up and strolled away without the formality of an adieu.
Avery watched his possible future colleague until he was lost in the crowd, and then he walked deliberately over to where the two girls stood.
"I have been talking with your father," he said, smiling and bowing to the older girl, "and although he did not say that I might come and talk to you, he told me who you were, and I think he would not object."
"Oh, no; he wouldn't object," said the younger girl, eagerly. "Would he, Fan? Everybody talks here. He told me so before we came. It's the first time we've been; but he's been before. I think it's splendid, don't you?"
The older girl had not spoken. She was looking at Selden Avery with half suppressed interest and embryonic suspicion. She still knew too little of life to have formed even a clearly defined doubt as to him or his intentions in speaking to them. She was less happy than she had expected to be when she dressed to come with her ever-dawning hope for a real pleasure. She thought there must be something wrong with her because things never seemed to come up to her expectations. She supposed this must be "society," and that when she got used to it, she would enjoy it more. But somehow she had wanted to resent it the first time a man spoke to her, and then, afterward, she was glad she did not, for he had danced with Ettie twice, and Ettie had said it was a lovely dance. She had made up her mind to accept the next offer she had, but when it came, the eyes of the man were so beady-black, and the odor of bay rum radiated so insistently from him that she declined. She hated bay rum because the worst scolding her father ever gave her was when she had emptied his cherished bottle upon her own head. The odor always brought back the heart-ache and resentment of that day, and so she did not think she cared to dance just then.
Selden Avery looked at Ettie. He did not want to tell her what he did think and he had not the heart to dampen her ardor, so he simply smiled, and said: