could judge better about him than any of the other members of the family could have it to know in them.
Mr. Dehning as yet had said nothing One day he was out walking and his daughter was with him. “Julia hadn't you better be a little careful how much you encourage that young Hersland.”
Mr. Dehning, always, in his working, began very far away from a thing he meant later to be firmly attacking. And always in such a far away beginning, he would be looking sharply, out from him, in a sidelong, piercing, deprecating, challenging, fashion, the kind of a way he had always of looking when his wife, who, by her more than equal living, as it often is with a woman, had not in any kind of a way any fear in her of him, could be going to rebuke him. And this way he had of looking, always made him an old man to his children, and mostly there was a fear then in them, only now Julia was strong, other things were bright and glowing, and she could not now feel it in him, the old grown man's sharp outward looking that, closing him, went always so straight into them.
And so, now, filled full with her new warm imagining, Julia Dehning had not any kind of a fear from him, the kind of a fear a young grown woman has almost always from an old man's looking.
“Why papa!” she had eagerly quickly demanded of him.
“I say Julia I don't know anything against him. Yes, I say to you Julia I don't know of anything there is against him. I have looked up all the record there is yet of him and I haven't heard anything against him but Julia, I say, somehow I don't quite like him. His family are alright, I know a man who knows all Gossols, and I asked him, he says yes the family are all successful and well appearing, I say Julia I don't say anything against him only I don't altogether trust him. I know all about his father, everybody has heard of David Hersland, he is the richest man they ever had in Gossols, I know too how he made his own money out there, and everybody says he is alright and he made his own money by his own work; I don't say anything against him, only Julia I think you better be a little careful with him, somehow I don't altogether like him.” “Isn't that papa because he plays the piano and parts his hair that way in the middle.” Julia was eager in her questioning. The father laughed, “I guess there is some reason in your question Julia, I don't like that kind of thing much in a man, that's right. It's foolish in a man who wants to make a success making a living, it's foolish to do things that make other men feel they don't want to trust him. It's alright if he was just doing nothing, only I never would want you to tie up with a man who didn't know how to take care of himself to make a living, but Hersland has got ambition, he wants to be a lawyer who makes a big success with his living, I know him, and that don't seem to me the kind of a way to make a good beginning, but may be I am wrong, you young ones always think you know everything. Anyhow Julia I think you better be a little careful with him.” Mr. Dehning paused, and they walked on a little while and she said nothing.
Henry Dehning had had a long time to learn how to judge the value in a man, the values in them that in their lives concerned him. The more one looked into the quality of him the more one learned respect for the power he had in him and the more wonder one had in them at the gentleness that almost never left him.
Mr. Dehning had a massive face made with a firm unagressive chin, loose masses in the cheeks and a strong curved nose, his eyes were blue and always clear, and set between loose pouches underneath and coarse rough overhanging brows. His strong-skulled rounded head was covered with thinning greyish hair. He was a man of medium height, stocky build and sharply squared shoulders, a man quick in his movements, slow in his judgments, and cheerful in his temper; a man to understand and to