“Don’t, don’t!” said Josie. “It sounds like the advertisements in the Herald.”
“Well, I was just leading up to a statement of what we lack,” continued Jim. “It’s the artistic atmosphere. We need a dash of the culture of Paris and Dresden and the place where they have the dinky little windmills which look so nice on cream-pitchers, but wouldn’t do for one of our farmers a minute. Come out and supply our lack. You owe it to the great cause of the amelioration of local savagery; and in view of my declaration of discipleship, and the effective way in which I have always upheld the standard of our barbarism, I claim that you owe it to me.”
“Take it up again.”
“I have made a vow.”
“Break it!”
She refused to yield, but was clearly yielding. Alice and I showed Trescott, on a plat, the place for his new home. He was quite taken with the idea, and said that ma would certainly be tickled with it.
Josie sat apart with Mr. Elkins, in earnest converse, for a long time. She looked frequently at her father, Jim constantly at her. Mr. Cornish dropped in for a little while, and joined us in presenting the case for removal. While he was there the girl seemed constrained, and not quite so fully at her ease; and I could detect, I thought, the old tendency to scrutinize his face furtively. When he went away, she turned to Jim more intimately than before, and almost promised that she would become his neighbor in Lynhurst. After the Trescotts’ carriage had come and taken them away, Jim told us that it was for her father, and the temptations of idleness in the town, that Miss Trescott feared.
“This fairy-godmother business,” said he, “ain’t what the prospectus might lead one to expect. It has its drawbacks. Bill is going to cash in all right, and I think it’s for the best; but, Al, we’ve got to take care of the old man, and see that he doesn’t go up in the air.”