Page:The Plutocrat (1927).pdf/546

 I'm not goin' to stand out against my daughter's happiness just because you didn't happen to be built to shine in that way."

Laurence Ogle drew a quick breath and looked briefly at the man beside him; but Tinker's troubled eyes were averted. Then the two sat in silence for some moments, preoccupied.

What preoccupied Ogle was a problem he foresaw in the long future. He was himself again;—at least, with a renewed purse, he was almost himself again; though he had suffered some enlightenments and improved his knowledge of himself. Nevertheless, in the last few minutes he had returned to his old opinion that Tinker was irrecoverably a great barbarian and the problem foreseen for the future concerned the barbarian's happiness as well as his own. Tinker often came to New York and would come oftener when his daughter lived there: Laurence trembled within when he thought of what the people he knew would think of his father-in-law, and of what they would think of himself for having such a father-in-law. They would never be able to understand that although Tinker was a barbarian, he was a great one; and the difficulty would be to conceal