“Well, you talk pretty fine for a young fellow,” answered one of the older men; and the party got up and exchanging a rough good-night, separated. Starbuck sat a long time with his chin on his hand, pulling at the embers of his pipe. Late at night the door opened and his sister returned; he heard a short colloquy at the door, and then she entered alone, with a flush upon her handsome face. She had the rude, frank bearing and the pitiless smile which belong to the type who take life’s pleasures without much regard to its pains or the pains of others; and the strong, full curve of the merry lip grows harder with age, with less of merriment and more of malice. But, withal, such a woman as no man could ever rule; and James felt it vaguely, as he sat and looked at her. “A pretty time for you to be in o’ nights,” said he; and the girl laughed loudly; and putting off her hat and shawl upon a chair, went to a little mirror and stood before it, touching her hair with her fingers. Now, a laugh and then silence was perhaps of all things the most exasperating to James Starbuck. “Who was that brought you home?” said he, rudely. “I don’t know what call you’ve got to ask me that,” said she. “I go with what gentlemen I choose; I don’t interfere with you sticking to your workmen, do I? Phew! how it smells of pipes;” and Jenny ostentatiously rattled open the light windows. “Well, its just here; I can’t have you going round this sort of way, that’s all,” and James banged his white fist upon the table. The girl only laughed, more contemptuously and less merrily than before, and the brother grew furious. “I can’t have it--d’ye hear?” “Mind your own business,” said the sister, “and don’t talk nonsense. I suppose you’d have me sit here in the back room and be a poor sempstress all my life. You like your lectures and your laborers’ clubs, and your political power that you’re all the time talking about--and I like to have a good time, and go out in society. We’re quits. What have you got to say against it?” “It--it ain’t right,” said James, weakly. “Oh, ain’t it? Well--I like it, then. I suppose you never do but what’s right, of course. You’re all the time complaining we don’t get enough of the good things of this world--I guess you’d get ’em yourself, if you could, anyhow. And I can.” And Jennie pulled off a very pretty little glove and showed a single diamond ring, which flashed bravely in the lamp-light. “You go ahead your way, an’ I’ll go mine; an’ I guess we’ll both get what we can.” James was honest enough in his philosophy, and really without direct personal ends; and the last words goaded him to madness. “Yes, an’ I guess you went your own way up to Allegheny City a little too much,” said he. “Where’s Charley Thurston now?” (This Charley Thurston was an old friend of Starbuck’s, to whom his sister had been once reported engaged.)