nd folded the
letter.

"Homesick to argue with you," snapped Bambi.

"He said, 'Or talk with you.'"

"Excuse me. He said, 'Or even talk with you.' I shall punish him for
that."

"He isn't comfortable. Hot and mid-Victorian. He isn't responsible,"
excused her father.

"He won't be comfortable when he gets the penalty," said Bambi,
fiercely.

"I am surprised that he consented to change his play. Samson's locks are
certainly shorn."

"What do you mean by that?"

"You have shaved him, my dear."

"Are you calling me Delilah?"

"You can't deny that he would never be where he is, doing what he is
now, if he were not married to you."

"What of it? Time he had a little discipline. He needs it and his work
needs it."

"Well, he's getting it."

"Are you pitying him because he isn't as mad as he was when I caught
him?"

"He's still mad, nor' by nor'east."

"I'll make a human being and a big artist out of Jarvis before I am
through."

"Be careful that you don't lose everything in him that makes him
Jarvis."

"Do you think that I can't do it?"

"I only say that creation, like vengeance, is God's. It is dangerous
when man tampers with it."

Upon a sudden impulse, she went to lean over him and kiss his bald head.

"I'll remember that, Herr Vater," said she.

As the result of their talk, her reply to Jarvis was not so fierce as
she had planned to make it, in her first indignation at his "even you."
She did not pat him on the back for making concessions about the play.
She merely said she was glad he was acting so sensibly about it, and
that if she was the mainspring of that action she was proud. As for
letting him off, he was the only living person who could keep him on, or
let him off. If he was the sort of softling who could not stand up under
life's discipline because it was uncomfortable or unpleasant, then no
power on earth could hold him to accomplishment. But, endowed as he was,
with brain, imagination, sensibilities, health, it lay in his power to
actually create himself, to say "such and such a man will I be," making
every touch of life's sculpturing fingers count, "even the pinches," she
added, picturesquely. Of course he must stay in New York as long as
necessary. If he was uncomfortable, he must move. He could not do good
work under irritating conditions. She told him that the Professor missed
him, and Ardelia contemplated sending a box of goodies. She omitted any
mention of her own state of m