“Advice! You need advice about as much as an angel needs a hat pin!”
“But I’m willing to change my plans if you have any suggestions.”
“I was a conceited old idiot when I was a little sore awhile ago because you had called me in for my opinion after you had settled everything. Go right ahead. It’s fine. Fine, I tell you!” He chuckled. “And to think that Harrison Blake thinks he’s bucking up against only a woman. Just a simple, inexperienced, dear, bustling, blundering woman! What a jar he’s got coming to him!”
“We mustn’t be too hopeful,” warned Katherine. “There’s a long, hard fight ahead. Perhaps my plan may not work out. And remember that, after all, I am only a woman.”
“But if you do win!” His old eyes glowed excitedly. “Your father cleared, the idol of the town upset, the water-works saved—think what a noise all that will make!”
A new thought slowly dawned into his face. “H’m—this old town hasn’t been, well, exactly hospitable to you; has laughed at you—sneered at you—given you the cold shoulder.”
“Has it? What do I care!”
“It would be sort of nice, now wouldn’t it,” he continued slowly, keenly, with his subdued excitement, “sort of heaping coals of fire on Westville’s roofs, if the town, after having cut you dead, should find that it had been saved by you. I suppose you’ve never thought of that aspect of the case—eh? I suppose it has never occurred to you that in saving your father you’ll also save the town?”
She flushed—and smiled a little.
“Oh, so we’ve already thought of that, have we. I see I can’t suggest anything new to you. Let the old town jeer all it wants to now, we’ll show ’em in the end!—is that it?”