The banker gazed over at his daughter half-quizzically, half-seriously, took out a cigar, and began to clip the end leisurely. The girl laughed. She knew that he had something on his mind. "Well, what is it?" she asked smiling. He gave a laugh. "Don't go and imagine that because that Jew can write he is any the less a--don't go and confound him and his work. It is the easiest thing in the world to pick flaws--to find the defects in any system. The difficult thing is constructive work." She nodded. "Did that foreigner go down there while you were there?" "The Count?" "The No-Count." "No, of course not. Where did you get such an idea?" He lighted his cigar with a look of relief, put it in his mouth, and sat back in his chair. "Don't let your Aunt Sophia go and make a fool of you. She is a very good business woman, but you know she is not exactly--Solomon, and she is stark mad about titles. When you marry, marry a man." "Mr. Canter, for example?" laughed the girl. "He is Aunt Sophia's second choice. She is always talking about his money." "She is always talking about somebody's money, generally her own. But before I'd let that fellow have you I'd kill him with my own hand. He's the worst young man I know. Why, if I could tell you half--yes, one-tenth, of the things I have heard about him--But I can't tell you--only don't go and let anybody pull the wool over your eyes." "No fear of that," said the girl. "No, I don't know that there is. I think you've got a pretty clear little head on your shoulders. But when any one gets--gets--why, gets her feelings enlisted you can't just count on her, you know. And with your Aunt Sophy ding-donging at you and flinging her sleek Count and her gilded fools at you, it takes a good head to resist her." The girl reassured him with a smile of appreciation. "I don't know where she got that from," continued her father. "It must have been that outside strain, the Prenders. Your mother did not have a trace of it in her. I never saw two half-sisters so different. She'd have married anybody on earth she cared for--and when she married me I had nothing in the world except what my father chose to give me and no very great expectations. She had a rich fellow from the South tagging after her--a big plantation and lots of slaves and all that, and your Aunt Sophy was all for her marrying him--a good chap, too--a gentleman and all that; but she turned him down and took me. And I made my own way. What I have I made afterward--by hard work till I got a good start, and then it came easy enough. The trouble since has been to keep others from stealing it from me--and that's more trouble than to make it, I can tell you--what between strikers, gamblers, councilmen, and other knaves, I have a hard time to hold on to what I have."