``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 say about Dorn to you?''
``He doesn't like him,'' replied Jane. ``He seems to be jealous
of him--and opposed to his political views.''
``Dorn's views ain't politics. They're--theft and murder and
highfalutin nonsense,'' said Hastings, not unconscious of his
feeble anti-climax.
``All the same, he--or rather, his mother--ought to have got
damages from the railway,'' said the girl. And there was a
sudden and startling shift in her expression --to a tenacity as
formidable as her father's own, but a quiet and secret tenacity.
Old Hastings wiped his mouth and began fussing uncomfortably with
a cigar.
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