“Why?” he repeated incredulously. “Why, because we aren’t in love with each other and never _could_ be! Never in the world!” “It isn’t necessary,” Mrs. Savage informed him. “You’d get along better if you weren’t. Martha comes of good stock, and she’s like her stock.” “There are other ‘good stocks’ in the country,” he thought proper to remind her gently. “There are a few people in New York of fairly good ‘stock’, you know, grandma.” “Maybe a few,” she said;—“but not our kind. The surest way to make misery is to mix stocks. You come of the best stock in the country, and you’ll be mighty sick some day if you go mixing it with a bad one.” “But good gracious!” he cried, “who’s talking of my mixing it with a——” “Never mind,” she interrupted crossly. “I know what those New York girls are like.” “But, grandma——” “I do,” she insisted. “They don’t know anything in the world except French and soirées, and it’s no wonder when you look at their stocks!” “Grandma——” “Listen to me,” she bade him sharply. “The best stocks in England were the yeoman stocks; you ought to know that much, yourself, after all these years you’ve spent at school and college. The strongest in mind and body out of the English yeoman stocks came to America; they fought the Indians and the French and the British and got themselves a country of their own. Then, after that, the strongest in mind and body out of those stocks came out here and opened this new country and built it up. All they’ve got left in the East now are the remnants that didn’t have gumption and get-up enough to strike out for the new land. The only thing that keeps the East going is the people that emigrate back there from here in the second and third generations. Don’t you mix your stock with any remnants! D’you hear me?” “Yes, ma’am,” he meekly replied, dismayed not only by the extremity of the discouraging old lady’s view upon “stocks” and “New York girls,” but also by her shrewdness in divining the cause of his long absence. Nevertheless, he ventured to protest again, though feebly. “I think if you could see New York nowadays, grandma, you wouldn’t think it’s a city built by ‘remnants,’ exactly.” “I don’t have to see it,” she retorted. “I know history; and besides, I was there with your grandfather in eighteen fifty-nine. We stayed two weeks at the Astor House, and your grandfather was mighty glad to get back here to home cooking. Even then all the smart men in New York came from somewhere else. Outside of them and the politicians, the only New York people you ever hear anything about are the ones that have had just barely gumption enough to be stingy.” “What? Why, grandma——”