“Well, now, looka here.  Take, f’rinstance your raw hides and leathers.”

But Ben and George didn’t want to “take, f’rinstance, your raw hides and leathers.”  They wanted, when they took anything at all, to take golf, or politics or stocks.  They were the modern type of business man who prefers to leave his work out of his play.  Business, with them, was a profession—­a finely graded and balanced thing, differing from Jo’s clumsy, downhill style as completely as does the method of a great criminal detective differ from that of a village constable.  They would listen, restively, and say, “Uh-uh,” at intervals, and at the first chance they would sort of fade out of the room, with a meaning glance at their wives.  Eva had two children now.  Girls.  They treated Uncle Jo with good-natured tolerance.  Stell had no children.  Uncle Jo degenerated, by almost imperceptible degrees, from the position of honoured guest, who is served with white meat, to that of one who is content with a leg and one of those obscure and bony sections which, after much turning with a bewildered and investigating knife and fork, leave one baffled and unsatisfied.

Eva and Stell got together and decided that Jo ought to marry.

“It isn’t natural,” Eva told him.  “I never saw a man who took so little interest in women.”

“Me!” protested Jo, almost shyly.  “Women!”

“Yes.  Of course.  You act like a frightened schoolboy.”

So they had in for dinner certain friends and acquaintances of fitting age.  They spoke of them as “splendid girls.”  Between thirty-six and forty.  They talked awfully well, in a firm, clear way, about civics, and classes, and politics, and economics, and boards.  They rather terrified Jo.  He didn’t understand much that they talked about, and he felt humbly inferior, and yet a little resentful, as if something had passed him by.  He escorted them home, dutifully, though they told him not to bother, and they evidently meant it.  They seemed capable, not only of going home quite unattended, but of delivering a pointed lecture to any highwayman or brawler who might molest them.

The following Thursday Eva would say, “How did you like her, Jo?”

“Like who?” Jo would spar feebly.

“Miss Matthews.”

“Who’s she?”

“Now, don’t be funny, Jo.  You know very well I mean the girl who was here for dinner.  The one who talked so well on the emigration question.

“Oh, her!  Why, I liked her all right.  Seems to be a smart woman.”

“Smart!  She’s a perfectly splendid girl.”

“Sure,” Jo would agree cheerfully.

“But didn’t you like her?”

“I can’t say I did, Eve.  And I can’t say I didn’t.  She made me think a lot of a teacher I had in the fifth reader.  Name of Himes.  As I recall her, she must have been a fine woman.  But I never thought of her as a woman at all.  She was just Teacher.”

“You make me tired,” snapped Eva impatiently.  “A man of your age.  You don’t expect to marry a girl, do you?  A child!”