"I hope your trip has put sense into you on that subject, anyhow?"
"I love Mrs. Richie as much as I ever did, if that's what you mean, sir," Sam said listlessly.
Upon which his grandfather flew into instant rage. "As much in love as ever! Gad-a-mercy! Well; I give you up, sir, I give you up. I spend my money to get you out of this place, away from this female, old enough to be your grandmother, and you come back and say you are as much in love with her as ever. I swear, I don't believe you have a drop of my blood in you!" He flung his cigar away, and plunged his hand down into the ginger-jar on the bench beside him; "A little boy like you, just in breeches! Why, your mother ought to put you over her knee, and—" he stopped. "You have no sense, Sam," he added with startling mildness.
But Sam's face was as red as his grandfather's. "She is only ten years older than I. That is nothing. Nothing at all. If she will overlook my comparative youth and marry me, I—"
"Damnation!" his grandfather screamed.. "She overlook? She?"
"I am younger," the boy said; "but love isn't a matter of age. It's a matter of the soul."
"A matter of the soul!" said Benjamin Wright; "a matter of—of a sugar-tit for a toothless baby! Which is just about what you are. That female, I tell you could have dandled you on her knee ten years ago."
Sam got up; he was trembling all over.
"You needn't insult me," he said.
Instantly his grandfather was calm. He stopped chewing orange-skin, and looked hard at his ridgy finger-nails.