The Conflict | Page 9

lunch,'' said Jane, dropping to a chair near the side of the table opposite her father. ``I had breakfast too late. Besides, I've got to look out for my figure. There's a tendency to fat in our family.''
The old man chuckled. ``Me, for instance,'' said he.
``Martha, for instance,'' replied Jane. Martha was her one sister--married and ten years older than she and spaciously matronly.
``Wasn't that Davy Hull you were talking to, down in the woods?'' inquired her father.
Jane laughed. ``You see everything,'' said she.
``I didn't see much when I saw him,'' said her father.
Jane was hugely amused. Her father watched her laughter--the dazzling display of fine teeth--with delighted eyes. ``You've got mighty good teeth, Jenny,'' observed he. ``Take care of 'em.
You'll never know what misery is till you've got no teeth--or next to none.'' He looked disgustedly into his bowl. ``Crackers and milk!'' grunted he. ``No teeth and no digestion. The only pleasure a man of my age can have left is eating, and I'm cheated out of that.''
``So, you wouldn't approve of my marrying Davy?'' said the girl.
Her father grunted--chuckled. ``I didn't say that. Does he want to marry you?''
``I didn't say that,'' retorted Jane. ``He's an unattached young man--and I, being merely a woman, have got to look out for a husband.''
Martin looked gloomy. ``There's no hurry,'' said he. ``You've been away six years. Seems to me you might stay at home a while.''
``Oh, I'd bring him here, popsy I've no intention of leaving you.
You were in an awful state, when I came home. That mustn't ever happen again. And as you won't live with Martha and Hugo--why, I've got to be the victim.''
``Yes--it's up to you, Miss, to take care of me in my declining years. . . . You can marry Davy--if you want to. Davy--or anybody. I trust to your good sense.''
``If I don't like him, I can get rid of him,'' said the girl.
Her father smiled indulgently. ``That's A LEETLE too up-to-date for an old man like me,'' observed he. ``The world's moving fast nowadays. It's got a long ways from where it was when your ma and I were young.''
``Do you think Davy Hull will make a career?'' asked Jane. She had heard from time to time as much as she cared to hear about the world of a generation before --of its bareness and discomfort, its primness, its repulsive piety, its ignorance of all that made life bright and attractive--how it quite overlooked this life in its agitation about the extremely problematic life to come. ``I mean a career in politics,'' she explained.
The old man munched and smacked for full a minute before he said, ``Well, he can make a pretty good speech. Yes--I reckon he could be taken in hand and pushed. He's got a lot of fool college-bred ideas about reforming things. But he'd soon drop them, if he got into the practical swing. As soon as he had a taste of success, he'd stop being finicky. Just now, he's one of those nice, pure chaps who stand off and tell how things ought to be done. But he'd get over that.''
Jane smiled peculiarly--half to herself. ``Yes--I think he would. In fact, I'm sure he would.'' She looked at her father. ``Do you think he amounts to as much as Victor Dorn?'' she asked, innocently.
The old man dropped a half raised spoonful of milk and crackers into the bowl with a splash. ``Dorn-- he's a scoundrel!'' he exclaimed, shaking with passion. ``I'm going to have that dirty little paper of his stopped and him put out of town. Impudent puppy!--foul- mouthed demagogue! I'll SHOW him!''
``Why, he doesn't amount to anything, father,'' remonstrated the girl. ``He's nothing but a common working man--isn't he?''
``That's all he is--the hound!'' replied Martin Hastings. A look of cruelty, of tenacious cruelty, had come into his face. It would have startled a stranger. But his daughter had often seen it; and it did not disturb her, as it had never appeared for anything that in any way touched her life. ``I've let him hang on here too long,'' went on the old man, to himself rather than to her. ``First thing I know he'll be dangerous.''
``If he's worth while I should think you'd hire him,'' remarked Jane shrewdly.
``I wouldn't have such a scoundrel in my employ,'' cried her father.
``Oh, maybe,'' pursued the daughter, ``maybe you couldn't hire him.''
``Of course I could,'' scoffed Hastings. ``Anybody can be hired.''
``I don't believe it,'' said the girl bluntly.
``One way or another,'' declared the old man. ``That Dorn boy isn't worth the price he'd want.''
``What price would he want?'' asked Jane.
``How should I know?'' retorted her father angrily.
``You've tried to hire him--haven't you?'' persisted she.
The father concentrated on his crackers and milk. Presently he said: ``What did that fool Hull boy