He would rather deal with these progressive people, knowing their tendencies, than with a lot of sapheads.
How to get control?
He lingered long and thoughtfully over that question, perhaps an hour, until presently he became aware that a slight young girl, with a fetching sun-hat and a basket, was walking pensively along the path on the opposite side of the brook, for the third time.

Her passing and repassing before his abstracted and unseeing vision had become slightly monotonous, and for the first time he focused his eyes back from their distant view of pulp marshes and stock certificates and inspected the girl directly.

Why, he knew that girl! It was Miss Hastings.
As if in obedience to his steady gaze she looked across at him and waved her basket.
"Where are you going ?" he asked with the heartiness of enforced courtesy.
"After ferns," she responded, and laughed.
"By George, that's so!" he said, and ran up the stream to a narrow place where he made a magnificent jump and only got one shoe wet.
He was profuse, not in his apologies, but in his intention to make them.
"Jinks!" he said.

"I'm ashamed to say I forgot all about that.

I found myself suddenly confronted with a business proposition that had to be worked out, and I thought of nothing else." "I hope you succeeded," she said pleasantly.
There wasn't a particle of vengefulness about Miss Hastings.