“Since I only get word of him from his dearest friends I am forced to take a somewhat jaundiced view of him.”
“I suppose you are surrounded by toadies who pretend to know him,” she said contemptuously.
I was not to be made angry. I was enjoying the dinner too much. “It would be a very terrible thing for our mutual friends,” I continued, “if the breach were ever healed, and we exchanged notes as to their tattling.”
“Fortunately they are in no danger,” she answered, more cheerfully—indeed I might say, more gleefully—than it seemed to me the occasion required.
“Fortunately,” I agreed, out of self-respect. Then I weakened a little by adding, “But what a pity it is you and I didn’t have the settling of that farm-line!”
“My father could not have acted otherwise,” she challenged back.
“And the courts decided that my grandfather was right.”
“I should have done just as he did,” she replied.
“Then you acknowledge my grandfather was right?”
“I!”—indignantly.