It was as though, in spite
of their talk, they thought him the most gifted of them all, and for a
time he was puzzled by their attitude. Jack Prince came, sat at one of the
dinner parties, and explained.
"You have got what they want and cannot get--the money," he said.
After the evening when Sue told him the great news they gave a dinner. It
was a sort of welcoming party for the coming guest, and, while the people
at the table ate and talked, Sue and Sam, from opposite ends of the table,
lifted high their glasses and, looking into each other's eyes, drank off
the health of him who was to come, the first of the great family, the
family that was to have two lives lived for its success.
At the table sat Colonel Tom with his broad white shirt front, his white,
pointed beard, and his grandiloquent flow of talk; at Sue's side sat Jack
Prince, pausing in his open admiration of Sue to cast an eye on the
handsome New York girl at Sam's end of the table or to puncture, with a
flash of his terse common sense, some balloon of theory launched by
Williams of the University, who sat on the other side of Sue; the artist,
who hoped for a commission to paint Colonel Tom, sat opposite him
bewailing the dying out of fine old American families; and a serious-faced
little German scientist sat beside Colonel Tom smiling as the artist
talked.
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