The discussion was so purely theoretical that he could be
amused without looking upon it seriously.
"For my part," he remarked, his big hand playing with a paper-knife on
one of the little tables, which, to a practised eye, suggested cards,
"I am of the progressive party, thank you. I believe in opening up the
country and putting railroads where they will do the most good. A few
people get their old prejudices run against, but on the whole it is for
the interest of a town to have a railroad, and it is nonsense to talk
any other way."
Mrs. Amanda Welsh Sampson leaned forward to lay her fingers upon the
speaker's arm.
"That is just it, Cousin Tom," she said, with a languishing glance.
"You always look at things in so large a way. You never let the matter
of personal interest decide, but think of the public good,"
The flattery was somewhat gross, but men will swallow a good deal in
the way of praise from women. They are generally slow to suspect the
fair sex of sarcasm, and allow themselves the luxury of enjoying the
pleasure of indulging their vanity untroubled by unpleasant doubts
concerning the sincerity of compliments which from masculine lips would
offend them. Greenfield laughed with a perceptible shade of
awkwardness, but he was evidently not ill pleased.
"Oh, well," he returned, "that is because thus far it has happened that
my personal interests and my convictions have worked together so well.
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