"He showed me a lot—he showed me everything. I could do it much better than a man who doesn't know our ways."
"But—" the lawyer hesitated, "but it isn't just a question of knowledge, Miss Joanna; it's a question of—how shall I put it?—well, of authority. A woman is always at a disadvantage when she has to command men."
"I'd like to see the man I couldn't make mind me."
Huxtable grinned. "Oh, I've no doubt whatever that you could get yourself obeyed; but the position—the whole thing—you'd find it a great strain, and people aren't as a rule particularly helpful to a woman they see doing what they call a man's job."
"I don't want anyone's help. I know my own business and my poor father's ways. That's enough for me."
"Did your father ever say anything to you about this?"
"Oh no—he being only fifty-one and never thinking he'd be took for a long while yet. But I know it's what he'd have wanted, or why did he trouble to show me everything? And always talked to me about things as free as he did to Fuller and Stuppeny."
"He would want you to do the best for yourself—he wouldn't want you to take up a heavy burden just for his sake."
"Oh, it ain't just for his sake, it's for my own. I don't want a strange man messing around, and Ansdore's mine, and I'm proud of it."
Huxtable rubbed his large nose, from either side of which his sharp eyes looked disapprovingly at Joanna. He admired her, but she maddened him by refusing to see the obvious side of her femininity.