“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 make use of men, slow to anger and tenacious, without heat or bitterness.
     His children knew the value of his judgments and the generous quality of his understanding, still he was of the old generation, they of the new, with all his wisdom surely he must fail to see the meanings in the unaccustomed.
     “You know Julia,” Mr. Dehning went on after a silent interval of walking when they had each been pretty busy with their own thinking, “you know Julia, your mother doesn't like him.” “Oh! mamma!” Julia broke out, “you know how mamma is, he talks about love and beauty and mamma thinks it ought to be all wedding dresses and a fine house when it isn't money and business. She would be the same about anybody that I would want.”
     “Yes Julia, those are your literary notions but a lawyer has got to be a business man now and you like success and money as well as any one. You have always had everything you wanted and you don't want to get along without it. Literary effects and modern improvements are alright for women but with Hersland it ought to be different, it ought to be that he has the kind of sense he needs in his business. I don't say he hasn't got good sense in him to make a success in him and you want to be careful I say Julia, how far you go with him.” “I know papa just what you mean, and that's alright papa, I know it, but you know yourself papa it isn't everything, now, is it. I know papa how you feel about it, you think we young ones are all wrong the way we look at it, but you say yourself papa how different things are nowadays from the way they used to be when you began with it, and surely papa it can't hurt a man to be interesting even if he wants to make a success in his business.”
     Mr. Dehning shook his head but he did not so carry much conviction to his daughter and on this day they said no more about the matter.
     And so Julia began and surely she would win in the struggle. She worked every day and very hard, and slowly she began to bring her father to it. Mrs. Dehning would have to agree if he said she could have it and no one else's opinion in the matter was important.
     Time and again Julia would be sure she had succeeded, for her father always listened to her “yes papa I know it, I know what you mean and it's alright, only you know yourself everything nowadays is very different, you know that yourself papa, you know you always say it,” and he liked to hear her say it, and he listened with amusement, and he approved when she knew how to do it, when she brought out with great fervor and with much repeating, great arguments against all his objections.