love Dory Hargrave," she said.
"But you wouldn't let yourself if you could--would you, now?"
"It's a poor love that lags for let," she replied. "Besides, why talk
about me? I'm 'only a woman.' I haven't any career, or any chance to
make one."
"But you might help some man," he teased.
"Then you'd like me to marry Dory--if I could?"
"I'm just showing you how vain your theorizing is," was his not
altogether frank reply. "You urge me to despise money when you
yourself--"
"That isn't fair, Arthur. If I didn't care for Ross I shouldn't think of
marrying him, and you know it."
"He's so like father!" mocked Arthur.
"No, but he's so like _you_," she retorted. "You know he was your ideal
for years. It was your praising him that--that first made me glad to do
as father and mother wished. You know father approves of him."
Arthur grinned, and Del colored. "A lot father knows about Ross as he
really is," said he. "Oh, he's clever about what he lets father see.
However, you do admit there's some other ideal of man than successful
workingman."
"Of course!" said Adelaide. "I'm not so silly and narrow as you try to
make out. Only, I prefer a combination of the two. And I think Ross is
that, and I hope and believe he'll be more so--afterwards."
Adelaide's tone was so judicial that Arthur thought it discreet not to
discuss his friend and future brother-in-law further. "He isn't good
enough for Del," he said to himself. "But, then, who is? And he'll
help her to the sort of setting she's best fitted for. What side
they'll put on, once they get going! She'll set a new pace--and it'll
be a grand one."
At the top of the last curve in the steep road up from Deer Creek the
horses halted of themselves to rest; Arthur and his sister gazed out upon
the vast, dreamy vision--miles on miles of winding river shimmering
through its veil of silver mist, stately hills draped in gauziest blue.
It was such uplifting vistas that inspired the human imagination, in the
days of its youth, to breathe a soul into the universe and make it a
living thing, palpitant with love and hope; it was an outlook that would
have moved the narrowest, the smallest, to think in the wide and the
large. Wherever the hills were not based close to the water's edge or
rose less abruptly, there were cultivated fields; and in each field, far
or near, men were at work. These broad-hatted, blue-shirted toilers in
the ardent sun determined the turn of Adelaide's
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