"Why not ?" he asked in a faintly irritated tone.
"Why not?
Why, father, you know how vulgar and conceited he is,--how everybody here truckles to him!" "Very likely; he's a very superior man of his kind,--a kind they understand here, too,--a great trapper, hunter, and pioneer." "But I don't believe in his trapping, hunting, and pioneering," said the girl, petulantly.

"I believe it's all as hollow and boisterous as himself.

It's no more real, or what one thinks it should be, than he is.

And he dares to patronize you--you, father, an educated man and a gentleman!" "Say rather an unsuccessful lawyer who was fool enough to believe that buying a ranch could make him a farmer," returned her father, but half jestingly.

"I only wish I was as good at my trade as he is." "But you never liked him,--you always used to ignore him; you've changed, father"-- She stopped suddenly, for her recollection of her father's quiet superiority and easy independence when he first came there was in such marked contrast to his late careless and weak concession to the rude life around them, that she felt a pang of vague degradation, which she feared her voice might betray.
"Very well! Do as you like," he replied, with affected carelessness; "only I thought, as we cannot afford to go elsewhere this Christmas, it might be well for us to take what we could find here." "Take what we could find here!" It was so unlike him--he who had always been so strong in preserving their little domestic refinements in their rude surroundings, that their poverty had never seemed mean, nor their seclusion ignoble.