THE BALANCE OF POWER
BY MAURICE THOMPSON
“I don't hesitate to say to you that I regard him as but a small remove in nature from absolute trash, Phyllis—absolute trash! His character may be good—doubtless it is; but he is not of good family, and he shows it. What is he but a mountain cracker? There is no middle ground; trash is trash!”
Colonel Mobley Sommerton spoke in a rich bass voice, slowly rolling his words. The bagging of his trousers at the knees made his straight legs appear bent, as if for a jump at something, while his daughter Phyllis looked at him searchingly, but not in the least impatiently, her fine gray eyes wide open, and her face, with its delicately blooming cheeks, its peach-petal lips, and its saucy little nose, all attention and half-indignant surprise.
“Of course,” the Colonel went on, with a conciliatory touch in his words, when he had waited some time for his daughter to speak and she spoke not—“of course you do not care a straw for him, Phyllis; I know that. The daughter of a Sommerton couldn't care for such a—”
“I don't mind saying to you that I do care for him, and that I love him, and want to marry him,” broke in Phyllis, with tremulous vehemence, tears gushing from her eyes at the same time; and a depth of touching pathos seemed to open behind her words, albeit they rang like so many notes of rank boldness in the old man's ears.
“Phyllis!” he exclaimed; then he stooped a little, his trousers bagging still more, and he stood in an attitude almost stagy, a flare of choleric surprise leaping into his face. “Phyllis Sommerton what do you mean? Are you crazy? You say that to me?”
The girl—she was just eighteen—faced her father with a look at once tearfully saucy and lovingly firm. The sauciness, however, was superficial and physical, not in any degree a part of her mental mood. She could not, had she tried, have been the least bit wilful or impertinent with her father, who had always been a model of tenderness. Besides, a girl never lived who loved a parent more unreservedly than Phyllis loved Colonel Sommerton.
“Go to your room, miss! go to your room! Step lively at that, and let me have no more of this nonsense. Go! I command you!”