Now, I don't fancy this young Culpeper.

He is a conceited sort of ass like his father before him, the sort that thinks all clover is his fodder." Though Gershom would have scorned philosophy had he ever heard of it, he was well grounded in that practical knowledge of human perversity from which all philosophers and most philosophic systems have sprung.
Had his next words been barbed with steel they could not have pierced Patty's girlish pride more sharply.

"I reckon he imagines all he's got to do is to look sweet at a girl, and she'll fall at his feet." Patty's eyes flashed with anger.

"He is not unusual in that, is he ?" she asked mockingly.
"Well, you can't accuse me of that, Patty," said Gershom, with a sincerity which made him appear less offensively oily.

"I never looked long at but one girl in my life, not since I first saw you, anyway--and I don't seem ever to have had an idea that she would fall at my feet.
But I didn't bring you out here to begin kidding.