He opened himself unreservedly to Brower, as
to a friend of the family; and Brower could not but feel that his two
years' attendance at the house, with thus far no definite outcome, had
given the head of it ample warrant for considering him as he did. Once or
twice, while Brower was counselling with X Marshall on the door-step,
another man--Tom Bingham--had been entertained by Jane within the breezy
recesses of the bay-window. It was then that Brower realized with a kind
of muffled desperation how completely he and Bingham seemed to have
changed positions. One had begun as the friend of a single member of the
family, to become in the end the common and equal friend of all, and to
sit discussing now with the head of it as one gray-beard with another.
The other had begun as the general friend of the household, and had now
advanced to the stage where he could fill in the dusk of an early
September evening with the talk and company of the one young woman in
the world whose talk and company were in any degree worth considering.
Brower crunched his cigar between his teeth, and replied to Marshall's
observations with a brusque carelessness for which he rebuked himself as
being neither respectful nor civil.
"I had never thought," said the old gentleman, looking lakeward through
the smoky twilight with a kind of vague wistfulnes, "but that all my
girls would marry Americans." He spoke slowly, musingly, in his huskily
sibilant tones.
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