Grant Arkwright came while the debate was still on.  He soon noted that something was at work in Josh’s mind to make him so silent and glum, so different from his usual voluble, flamboyant self.  “What’s up, Josh?  What deviltry are you plotting now to add to poor old Stillwater’s nervous indigestion?”

“I’m thinking about marriage,” said Craig, lighting a cigarette and dropping into the faded magnificence of an ex-salon chair.

“Good business!” exclaimed Arkwright.

“It’s far more important that you get married than that I do,” explained Craig.  “At present you don’t amount to a damn.  You’re like one of those twittering swallows out there.  As a married man you’d at least have the validity that attaches to every husband and father.”

“If I could find the right girl,” said Grant.

“I thought I had found her for you,” continued Craig.  “But, on second thoughts, I’ve about decided to take her for myself.”

“Oh, you have?” said Arkwright, trying to be facetious of look and tone.

“Yes,” said Josh, in his abrupt, decisive way.  He threw the cigarette into the empty fireplace and stood up.  “I think I’ll take your advice and marry Miss Severance.”

“Really!” mocked Grant; but he was red with anger, was muttering under his breath, “Insolent puppy!”

“Yes, I think she’ll do.”  Craig spoke as if his verdict were probably overpartial to her.  “It’s queer about families and the kind of children they have.  Every once in a while you’ll find a dumb ass of a man whose brain will get to boiling with liquor or some other ferment, and it’ll incubate an idea, a real idea.  It’s that way about paternity—­or, rather, maternity.  Now who’d think that inane, silly mother of Margaret’s could have brought such a person as she is into the world?”

“Mrs. Severence is a very sweet and amiable lady,” said Grant coldly.

“Pooh!” scoffed Craig.  “She’s a nothing—­a puff of wind—­a nit.  Such as she, by the great gross, wouldn’t count one.”

“I doubt if it would be—­wise—­politically, I mean—­for you to marry a woman of—­of the fashionable set.”  Grant spoke judicially, with constraint in his voice.

“You’re quite right there,” answered Craig promptly.  “Still, it’s a temptation....I’ve been reconsidering the idea since I discovered that she loves me.”

Grant leaped to his feet.  “Loves you!” he shouted.  Josh smiled calmly.  “Loves me,” said he.  “Why not, pray?”

“I—­I—­I—­don’t know,” answered Grant weakly.

“Oh, yes, you do.  You think I’m not good enough for her—­as if this were not America, but Europe.”  And he went on loftily:  “You ought to consider what such thoughts mean, as revelations of your own character, Grant.”

“You misunderstood me entirely,” protested Grant, red and guilty.  “Didn’t I originally suggest her to you?”

“But you didn’t really mean it,” retorted Craig with a laugh which Grant thought the quintessence of impertinence.  “You never dreamed she’d fall in love with me.”