d grown rich not because he was ravenous or hard, but simply
because he had an ear, not to term it a nose. He could make out the tune
in the discord of the market-place; he could smell success far up
the wind. The second factor in his little addition was that he was an
unassuming father. He had no tastes, no acquirements, no curiosities,
and his daughters represented all society for him. He thought much
more and much oftener of these young ladies than of his bank-shares and
railway-stock; they crowned much more his sense of accumulated property.
He never compared them with other girls; he only compared his present
self with what he would have been without them. His view of them was
perfectly simple. Delia had a greater direct knowledge of life and
Francie a wider acquaintance with literature and art. Mr. Dosson had
not perhaps a full perception of his younger daughter's beauty: he
would scarcely have pretended to judge of that, more than he would of a
valuable picture or vase, but he believed she was cultivated up to the
eyes. He had a recollection of tremendous school-bills and, in later
days, during their travels, of the way she was always leaving books
behind her. Moreover wasn't her French so good that he couldn't
understand it?

The two girls, at any rate, formed the breeze in his sail and the only
directing determinant force he knew; when anything happened--and he was
under the impression that things DID happen--they were there for it to
have happened TO. Without them in short, as he felt, he would have been
the tail without the kite. The wind rose and fell of course; there were
lulls and there were gales; there were intervals during which he simply
floated in quiet waters--cast anchor and waited. This appeared to be one
of them now; but he could be patient, knowing that he should soon again
inhale the brine and feel the dip of his prow. When his daughters were
out for any time the occasion affected him as a "weather-breeder"--the
wind would be then, as a kind of consequence, GOING to rise; but their
now being out with a remarkably bright young man only sweetened the
temporary calm. That belonged to their superior life, and Mr. Dosson
never doubted that George M. Flack was remarkably bright. He represented
the newspaper, and the newspaper for this man of genial assumptions
represented--well, all other representations whatever. To know Delia and
Francie thus attended by an editor or a correspondent was really to see