There was a minute of silence, except for the steady trudging of the patient horses and occasionally the sound of a stone dislodged by their digging hoofs and rolling down the mountainside. It was not until Tom gave evidence of withdrawing to his seat on the rear edge of the buckboard that the girl observed:

“If you have to stay with them all the time in order to be one of them, if that’s the only way you can get results, it shows your own weakness; it shows that it’s your presence and not your personality that counts. If you were really big it wouldn’t make any difference where you stayed. They’d worship you.”

“I don’t believe Mr. Slade wants to be worshipped,” laughed Ferris.

“No, but he seems to think he has to choose between one thing or the other,” the girl said. “It didn’t make any difference where Napoleon was, his troops adored him.

“If you’re afraid of what they think, that’s just the very thing that will make them think the worst of you. You start by thinking what they would like best. It isn’t you they will like; it’s your decision. Tact isn’t as big as personality. If you have personality people will love you even if you sit on a throne. I’d rather be liked for what I am than for what I do.”

“Well then,” said her brother, brutally reducing her talk to its common denominator, “we’ll have Mr. Slade in the cottage if that’s what you want.”

“That isn’t it at all,” the girl flared up, blushing. “He as much as said that he couldn’t win the men unless he played a part.”

“Played a part?” her brother queried.

“Yes, played a part.”

“You’re thinking of our actor,” Ferris laughed.

And Tom laughed too, feeling very much beyond his depth.

“It’s just like a politician who goes around shaking hands with everybody to get votes,” the girl said.

“You said they’d dislike me,” Tom ventured to remind her.

“Yes, because you’re not big enough to be one of them and yet not actually live among them. There are very few big enough to surmount artificial arrangements.”

Poor Tom was quite staggered with such highbrow talk.

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