“I mean about your feeling toward Dan and me.” Harlan smiled, but his eyes were expressive of something far from amusement. It was as if here he referred to an old and troubling puzzlement of his, but had long ago resigned himself to the impossibility of finding a solution. “I mean she’s like you because she’s always thought so much more of Dan than she has of me, Martha.” “Perhaps it’s because you’ve never seemed to think much of anything, yourself,” she said gently. “Perhaps we’re apt to like people best who do a great deal of liking themselves.” “I might like to have you like me, Martha,” Harlan ventured, and there was a quiet wistfulness about him then that touched her. “I might like it better than you know.” She looked at him gravely. “I do like you,” she said. “I like you anyhow; but even if I didn’t, I’d like you because you’re Dan’s brother.” Harlan sighed, but contrived a smile to accompany his sigh. “Yes; I’ve always understood that, Martha; and you’re not at all peculiar in your preference. Not only you and grandmother, but everybody else likes Dan much better than me.” “And yet,” Martha said, a smouldering glow in her kind eyes, “you tell me that everybody’s laughing at him.” “Haven’t you heard so yourself?” “Yes, I have,” she cried angrily. “But how can they, if they like him?” “Isn’t it plain enough? They like him because he’s a democratic, friendly soul, and they laugh at him because he’s so absurd about the Ornaby farm.” “And you think he’s got to do the whole thing absolutely alone?” “Why, no,” Harlan said, correcting her lightly, “I don’t think he’s going to be able to do the whole thing at all. He’ll get part way and then of course he’ll have to quit, because his money’ll give out. What he has left may last him a year or even longer, if he keeps on just doing with his little gang of darkies and himself.” “And in the meantime, he’ll also keep on being a ‘laughing stock?’ That’s what you said, didn’t you?” “I don’t think it was an exaggeration,” Harlan returned, defending himself, for her tone was sharply accusing. “After all,” he went on, with placative lightness, “isn’t it even rather a triumph in its way? You see, Martha, it isn’t every young man of his age who’d be well enough known to occupy that position.” “A laughing stock?” “Why, yes. Don’t you see it means a degree of prominence not at all within the reach of every Tom, Dick, and Harry. For instance, _I_ couldn’t touch it: I don’t know enough people; but Dan’s one of those men of whom it’s said, ‘Oh, everybody in town knows _him!_’ So, you see, since he’s run wild over this Ornaby Addition, why, he actually has the whole town laughing at him.” “Since he’s run wild!” she echoed scornfully. “And you say you don’t exaggerate! How has he ‘run wild?’”