And I can't get it out
of his head."
Margaret's smile irritated him still further. "All great men are
more or less rude and crude, aren't they?" said she. "They are
impatient of the trifles we lay so much stress on."
"So, you think Josh is a great man?"
"I don't know," replied Margaret, with exasperating
deliberateness. "I want to find out."
"And if you decide that he is, you'll marry him?"
"Perhaps. You suggested it the other day."
"In jest," said Arkwright, unaccountably angry with her, with
himself, with Joshua. "As soon as I saw him in your presence, I
knew it wouldn't do. It'd be giving a piece of rare, delicate
porcelain to a grizzly as a plaything."
He was surprised at himself. Now that he was face to face with a
possibility of her adopting his own proposition, he disliked it
intensely. He looked at her; never had she seemed so alluring, so
representative of what he called distinction. At the very idea of
such refinement at the mercy of the coarse and boisterous Craig,
his blood boiled. "Josh is a fine, splendid chap, as a man among
men," said he to himself." But to marry this dainty aristocrat to
him--it'd be a damned disgraceful outrage.
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