"Well, anyway, you've never told me so." She turned an indignant shoulder to him.
"How could I?"
"Why couldn't you?"
"But don't you see that I shouldn't, Josie?" He turned back to her side, looked down at her, pleaded his defence with the fire of desperation.
"Just think: you are an only daughter." Just what this had to do with the case was not plain even to him. "An only daughter," he repeated— "ah—not only your father's only daughter, but your mother's only daughter. Your father—ah—is my friend. How unfair it would be to him."
But the girl interrupted with decision. "But papa wants you to... He told me so."
He could only pretend not to understand. "But consider, Josie: you are rich, an heiress: I'm a poor man. Would you like it to be said I was after your money?"
"No one would dare say such a thing," she asserted with profound conviction.
"Oh, yes, they would. You don't know the world as I do. And for all you know, they might be right. How do you know that———"
"Nat!" A catch in her voice stopped him. "Don't say such horrid things! I could tell: a woman always can. I know you would be incapable of such a thing. Papa knows it, too. No one has ever got ahead of papa, and he says you are a fine, steady, Christian man, and he would rather see me your wife than any———"'