"There's a fine girl, as charming as any girl dare be. She has a father who doesn't appreciate her;--a good fellow and all that and he wouldn't hurt her for anything on earth; but he hasn't got any sensibility; that's the trouble with scores of American fathers. These Western ones are worse than any others. They break their sons in, whenever they can, to the same collars they've worn themselves. Their daughters they usually don't understand at all! They intimidate their wives so that the poor things don't dare call their souls their own; but the women are the saving remnant out here. And when a particularly fine one turns up she ought to be protected from the curse of our infernal commercialism." He threw himself into a chair and lighted a cigarette. Saxton laughed silently. "Isn't this a new responsibility you've taken on? I don't believe these things are as bad as you make them out to be. The commercial curse is one of the things you can't dodge these days. It's just as bad in Boston as it is here; and you find it wherever you find live people who want bread to eat and cake if they can get it." "But to visit the curse on a girl,--a fine girl,--" "A pretty girl,--" Saxton suggested. "A really charming girl," continued Warrick, with unabated earnestness, "is a rotten shame." "I'm afraid you're taking it too seriously," said Saxton. "If Miss Porter were not a very sensible young woman it would be different. You don't think for a moment that she would have her head turned--" "No, sir; not a bit of it; but it's the principle of the thing that I'm kicking about. This is one of the things that I detest in these Western towns. It's the inability to escape from their infernal business. On the face of it their Midas ball is a social event, but at the bottom, it's merely a business venture. All the business men have got to go in for it, but it doesn't stop there; they must drag their families in. Evelyn Porter has got to mix up with the daughters of the plumbers and the candlestick makers in order that the god of commerce may be satisfied." "You don't quite grasp the situation," said Saxton. "If you had to get out among these men who have hard work to do every day you'd have a different feeling about such things. They've got to make the town go, and this carnival is one of the ways in which they can stir things up commercially, and at the same time give pleasure to a whole lot of people." "Now look here, you know as well as I do that you can't mix up all sorts and conditions of men, and particularly women, in this way, without making a mess of it. A man may introduce the green grocer at the corner, and all that kind of ruck, to his wife and daughter, but what's the good of it?"