“This—” the speaker was judge Price; “this is the place for me: They are a warm-hearted people, sir; a prosperous people, and a patriotic people with an unstinted love of country. A people full of rugged virtues engaged in carving a great state out of the indulgent bosom of Nature. I like the size of their whisky glasses; I like the stuff that goes into them; I despise a section that separates its gallons into too many glasses. Show me a community that does that, and I'll show you a community rapidly tending toward a low scale of living. I'd like to hang out my shingle here and practise law.”
The judge and Mr. Mahaffy were camped in the woods between Boggs' and Raleigh. Betty had carried Hannibal off to spend the night at Belle Plain, Carrington had disappeared with Charley Norton; but the judge and Mahaffy had lingered in the meadow until the last refreshment booth struck its colors to the twilight, and they had not lingered in vain. The judge threw himself at full length on the ground, and Mahaffy dropped at his side. About them, in the ruddy glow of their camp-fire, rose the dark wall of the forest.
“I crave opportunity, Solomon—the indorsement of my own class. I feel that I shall have it here,” resumed the judge pensively.
But Mahaffy was sad in his joy, sober in his incipientent drunkenness. The same handsome treatment which the judge commended, had been as freely tendered him, yet he saw the end of all such hospitality. This was the worm in the bud. The judge, however, was an eager idealist; he still dreamed of Utopia, he still believed in millenniums. Mahaffy didn't and couldn't. Memory was the scarecrow in the garden of his hopes—you could wear out your welcome anywhere. In the end the world reckoned your cost, and unless you were prepared to make some sort of return for its bounty, the cold shoulder came to be your portion instead of the warm handclasp.
“Hannibal has found friends among people of the first importance. I have made it my business to inquire into their standing, and I find that young lady is heiress to a cool half million. Think of that, Solomon—think of that! I never saw anything more beautiful than her manifestation of regard for my protege—”
“And you made it your business, Mr. Price, to do your very damnedest to ruin his chances,” said Mahaffy, with sudden heat.
“I ruin his chances?—I, sir? I consider that I helped his chances immeasurably.”
“All right, then, you helped his chances—only you didn't, Price!”
“Am I to understand, Solomon, that you regard my interest in the boy as harmful?” inquired the judge, in a tone of shocked surprise.
“I regard it as a calamity,” said Mahaffy, with cruel candor.