on, because it was true, you know, and I felt most awfully sorry for him, and it seemed so unjust and wrong that I couldn't meet him properly—only through cracked porcelains and chewed-up low-gears.)
"Then it just comes down to this: I have to meet your father, and simply force him to like me."
It seemed tame to remind him that this was easier said than done. Making papa like you wasn't an affair of touching a button. And, if anything, he was more ferocious than ever about losing the Vincents, and his dislike of Mr. Marsden had become a monomania. That's the trouble about a man who's been good-natured all his life, and never had an enemy except the legislature; when at last he finds one he won't let it go. I believe papa actually enjoyed being a Marsden-phoboist.
"There is something in what you said just now," he went on meditatively. "I must get him into a tight place and save him."
"It can't be done," I said. "Papa's been
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