She stopped him. "I haven't got so yet awhile that I have to take anybody's money for nothin'," she said sharply. "There, there, Sears! I know you'd give me every cent you had if I'd let you. I'll tell you why I took Mr. Phillips. He came to supper with George the other night and stayed all the evenin'. He's one of the most interestin' men I ever met in my life. Not any more interestin' than you are, of course," she added, loyally, "but in—in a different way."
"Um ... yes. I shouldn't wonder."
"Yes, he is. And he liked my supper, and said so. Ate some of everything and praised it, and was just as—as common and everyday and sociable, not a mite proud or—like that."
"Why in the devil should he be?"
"Why—why, I don't know why he shouldn't. Lots of folks who know as much as he does and have been everywhere and known the kind of people he knows—they would be stuck up—yes, and are. Look at Cap'n Elkhanah Wingate and his wife."
"I don't want to look at 'em. How do you know how much this Phillips knows?"
"How do I know? Why, Sears, you ought to hear him talk. I never heard such talk. The children just—just hung on his words, as they say. And he was so nice to them. And Joel and George Kent they think he's the greatest man they ever saw. Oh, all hands in Bayport like him."
"Humph! When he was here before, teachin' singin' school, he wasn't such a Grand Panjandrum. At least, I never heard that he was."
"Sears, you don't like him, do you? I'm real surprised. Yes, and—and sorry. Why don't you like him?"
Her brother laughed. "I didn't say I didn't like him, Sarah," he replied. "Besides, what difference would one like more or less make? I don't know him very well."