Not without a lot of misgivings, you can be sure. I had one little experience with him right at the start that made me uneasy and got me to thinking he was what you might call too literary, or theatrical, or something, and that he was more interested in being things than doing them. I'd been aware, ever since he got back from Harvard, that _I_ was one of his literary interests, so to speak. He had a way of talking to me in a _quizzical_, condescending style, in the belief that he was drawing me out, the way you talk to some old book-peddler in your office when you've got nothing to do for a while; and it was easy to see he regarded me as a “character” and thought he was studying me. Besides, he felt it his duty to study the wickedness of politics in a Parkhurstian fashion, and I was one of the lost. One day, just after we'd nominated him, he came to me and said he had a friend who wanted to meet me. Asked me couldn't I go with him right away. It was about five in the afternoon; I hadn't anything to do and said, “Certainly,” thinking he meant to introduce me to some friend of his who thought I'd talk politics with him. I took that for granted so much that I didn't ask a question, just followed along up street, talking weather. He turned in at old General Buskirk's, and may I be shot if the person he meant wasn't Buskirk's daughter, Bella! He'd brought me to call on a girl young enough to be my daughter. Maybe you won't believe I felt like a fool! I knew Buskirk, of course (he didn't appear), but I hadn't seen Bella since she was a child. She'd been “highly educated” and had been living abroad a good deal, but I can't say that my visit made me _for_ her--not very strong. She was good-looking enough, in her thinnish, solemn way, but it seemed to me she was kind of overdressed and too grand. You could see in a minute that she was intense and dreamy and theatrical with herself and superior, like Farwell; and I guess I thought they thought they'd discovered they were “kindred souls,” and that each of them understood (without saying it) that both of them felt that Farwell's lot in life was a hard one because Mrs. Knowles wasn't up to him. Bella gave him little, quiet, deep glances, that seemed to help her play the part of a person who understood everything--especially him, and reverenced greatness--especially his. I remember a fellow who called the sort of game it struck me they were carrying on “those soully flirtations.” Well, sir, I wasn't long puzzling over why he had brought _me_ up there. It stuck out all over, though they didn't know it, and would have been mighty astonished to think that I saw. It was in their manner, in her condescending ways with me, in her assumption of serious interest, and in his going through the trick of “drawing me out,” and exhibiting me to her. I'll have to admit that these young people viewed me in the light of a “character.” That was the part Farwell had me there to play.