(_she sits down_)
And I don't know why I have.
FEJEVARY: Certainly it's not strange. If ever a girl had a background,
Morton College is Madeline Fejevary Morton's background. (_he too now
seated by the table_) Do you remember your Grandfather Morton?
MADELINE: Not very well. (_a quality which seems sullenness_) I couldn't
bear to look at him. He shook so.
FEJEVARY: (_turning away, real pain_) Oh--how cruel!
MADELINE: (_surprised, gently_) Cruel? Me--cruel?
FEJEVARY: Not just you. The way it passes--(_to himself_) so _fast_ it
passes.
MADELINE: I'm sorry. (_troubled_) You see, he was too old then--
FEJEVARY: (_his hand up to stop her_) I wish I could bring him back for
a moment, so you could see what he was before he (_bitterly_) shook so.
He was a powerful man, who was as real as the earth. He was strangely of
the earth, as if something went from it to him. (_looking at her
intently_) Queer you should be the one to have no sentiment about him,
for you and he--sometimes when I'm with you it's as if--he were near. He
had no personal ambition, Madeline. He was ambitious for the earth and
its people. I wonder if you can realize what it meant to my father--in a
strange land, where he might so easily have been misunderstood, pushed
down, to find a friend like that? It wasn't so much the material
things--though Uncle Silas was always making them right--and as if--oh,
hardly conscious what he was doing--so little it mattered.
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