"I don't want any differences with your father--or with you, Miss Presson," he declared, earnestly. "I honestly don't! It all seems to be a mighty mixed-up mess. I sometimes wish I'd stayed back home in the woods. I'm too little a fellow to be in such a big game. I'm afraid I'm so small I can only see one side of it."
"My grandfather and your father have impressed that on me pretty strongly."
"Isn't there any good in the other side? Do you mean to tell me that all the men in politics in this State are wrong except you and old General Waymouth?"
"No, but it's the way of doing things. I guess it's that."
She drew her horse to a stop. The country road was quiet. The hush of the starry August night was over all.
"Mr. Thornton," she said, looking him squarely in the eyes, "with all due respect to the mighty masculine, I believe you are in need of a few suggestions from a woman's standpoint. You haven't acquired the art of flattery. If so, you'd be gallant and say I have just as much acumen as you have honesty."
"No, you're too late. I very unmodestly gave myself the compliment. Now I'm going to tell you where you are wrong in this whole matter, Mr. Thornton. You are reckoning without the human instruments that you must employ. I'll wait just a moment and let that remark sink into your mind. You are a bit slow about grasping the full purport of remarks, Mr. Harlan Thornton." There was a touch of her satiric humor in her tone. "Now, you don't fully understand, even yet. I think I'll have to illustrate. I've already told you that I've watched matters pretty closely at the capital. I like to see young men come here with ideals and succeed, but, alas, they do not."
"They let themselves be bought or bribed or bossed, probably," blurted Harlan.
"I'm not talking about that kind. They are too obvious and too common. I complimented my own self. Now you are insulting yourself by jumping at conclusions. You should have a better opinion of yourself, sir. I have. I do not believe you could be bought or bossed or even coaxed from what you considered your honest duty. You do not need to assure me. But you might be _convinced_, Mr. Thornton--convinced by good reasons--that it is not a young man's duty to ruin his own prospects and his own influence by undertaking something as impracticable as though he tried to be a meteor by holding a candle in his hand and jumping off a roof. I could praise his imagination, but not his judgment."