"Are they shut--tight--tight?"
"Yes, but I don't--"
"Now, don't talk, Papa, but listen like a good little railroad president, and I'll tell you what I think of J. Whitlock Pastor, and that is he's unbearable! No, no, I'm not joking--I mean it, I mean it! He's unbearable, and his mother's unbearable, and the forty yards around them is unbearable, and I wouldn't marry him for anything under the sun, no, not if he was the only man in the world except the clergyman who would do it; and Papa, I'm so mortified and ashamed and miserable that I don't know what to do. Didn't you notice me to-night, and how shy and crushed I was, sitting there like a little Judas, and feeling, oh, horribly wicked and treacherous? It was all I could do not to scream out that I hated him, just as loud as I could: I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!--I was trying to tell you that when we started, but I didn't have the courage. I wanted you to see him for yourself; to realize how unendurable he is; I--I--wanted you not to blame me too much, Papa."
To Mr. Ladd it was like a reprieve at the gallows' foot. Blame her? Why, elation ran to his head like wine; he caught her in his arms and hugged her; had he saved her from drowning he could not have been more passionately thankful. His opinion of the young man came out in a torrent of unvarnished Anglo-Saxon. To every epithet he applied to him, Phyllis added a worse. In their wild humor, and bubbling over with a laughter that verged on the hysterical, they vied with each other in tearing J. Whitlock to pieces.
"But, Phyllis, Phyllis, how did you ever come to do it?"
"I don't know, Papa."
"But you must have liked him?"
"I thought I did."
"Was it the attraction of his position--his name--and all that kind of thing?"
"No, I thought I loved him."