"I thought you could take him in with you; get him started at something scientific; something that would interest and absorb him, and something that would not leave all his real energies free for mischief."
Darrow leaned his head against the back of the chair and laughed softly. So long did his amusement continue that Helen at length brought him rather sharply to account.
"I was merely admiring," then exclaimed Darrow, "the delicious femininity of the proposal. It displays at once such really remarkable insight into the psychological needs of another human being, and such abysmal ignorance of the demands of what we are pleased to call science."
"You are the most superior and exasperating and conceited man I know!" cried Helen. "I am sorry I asked you. I'd like to know what there is so silly in my remarks!"
"Jack is physically very strong; he is most courageous; he has a good disposition, a gentleman's code, and an eager likable nature. I gather further that he does me the honor of admiring me personally. He has received a general, not a special, college education."
"Well!" challenged Helen.
"Barring the last, these are exactly the qualifications of a good bull-terrier."
"Oh!" cried the girl indignantly, and half rising. "You are insulting!"
"No," denied Darrow. "Not that—never to you, Helen, and you know it! I'm merely talking sense. Leaving aside the minor consideration that I am myself looking for employment, what use has a scientist for a bull-terrier? Jack has no aptitude for science; he has had none of the accurate training absolutely essential to science. He probably wouldn't be interested in science. At the moment he happens to admire me, and I'm mighty glad and proud that it is so. But that doesn't help. If I happened to be a saloon man, Jack would quite as cheerfully want to be a barkeeper. I'd do anything in the world to help Jack; but I'm not the man. You want to hunt up somebody that needs a good bull-terrier. Lots do."
"I hate such a cold-blooded way of going at things!" cried the girl. "You show no more interest in Jack than if—than if—"