Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Ill HAT'S good—that's good," Mr. Wol- laston chuckled, as they drew near their own gate. "And yet you didn't speak as if you liked him much," Mrs. Wollas- ton said, with a slight suggestion of reproof. "I haven't got to marry him. It doesn't matter whether I like him or not. The essential is that some one else is going to look after her and I shall be free." "I wish we knew a little more about him," Mrs. Wollaston sighed. "As a man he is charming and as a writer he is quite unusual." "Isn't that enough?" "Oh yes, Hector, dear. I think every one ought to be judged on his own merits. I'm republican enough for that. But Agatha belongs to a very old Massachusetts family and so it seems a pity—" "That any outsider should get her. Is that it?" "Well, not exactly, Hector. I only mean—" "I know what you mean and what you haven't the courage to say. You mean that the old, intellectual aristocracy of New England, of which your family and mine form part, are the Lord's chosen people—that all who are outside are but Hivites and Hittites,whether they come from California, Texas, or Illinois—'' "I don't, Hector," she protested. "I believe all our people ought to be admitted to the same privileges as ourselves. It would make no difference to me what part of the country a man came from—not even if it was from New York. I'm more broad-minded than you think. I was only wishing that we knew more about Mr. Muir's origin than we do." "Well, I can tell you. His father was Alexander Muir, Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. He was a remarkable man in his day, and was one of the first of the foreign professors to be invited to this country to deliver a course of lectures. At Ann Arbor, I think it was, he met a young Chicago lady...