id the girl. "I don't like it."

"Ah, he's to blame for that," Matt said. "But as for his hardness, that
probably comes from his having had to make such a hard fight for what he
wants to be in life. That hardens people, and brutalizes them, but
somehow we mostly admire them and applaud them for their success against
odds. If we had a true civilization a man wouldn't have to fight for the
chance to do the thing he is fittest for, that is, to be himself. But
I'm glad you don't like Maxwell's hardness; I don't myself."

"He seems to look upon the whole world as material, as he calls it; he
doesn't seem to regard people as fellow beings, as you do, Matt, or even
as servants or inferiors; he hasn't so much kindness for them as that."

"Well, that's the odious side of the artistic nature," said Matt,
smiling tolerantly. "But he'll probably get over that; he's very young;
he thinks he has to be relentlessly literary now."

"He's older than I am!" said Louise.

"He hasn't seen so much of the world."

"He thinks he's seen a great deal more. I don't think he's half so nice
as we supposed. I should call him dangerous."

"Oh, I shouldn't say _that_, exactly," Matt returned. "But he certainly
hasn't our traditions. I'll just step over and call him to dinner."

"Oh, no! Let me try if I can blow the horn." She ran to where the long
tin tube hung on the porch, and coming out with it again, set it to her
lips and evoked some stertorous and crumby notes from it. "Do you
suppose he saw me?" she asked, running back with the horn.

Matt could not say; but Maxwell had seen her, and had thought of a poem
which he imagined illustrated with the figure of a tall, beautiful girl
lifting a long tin horn to her lips with outstretched arms. He did not
know whether to name it simply The Dinner Horn, or grotesquely, Hebe
Calling the Gods to Nectar. He debated the question as he came lagging
over the grass with his cushion in one hand and Pinney's letter, still
opened, in the other. He said to Matt, who came out to get the cushion
of him, "Here's something I'd like to talk over with you, when you've
the time."

"Well, after dinner," said Matt.

Pinney's letter was a long one, written in pencil on one side of long
slips of paper, like printer's copy; the slips were each carefully
folioed in the upper right hand corner; but the language was the
language of Pinney's life, and not the decorative diction which he
usually addressed to the public