As he spoke, he remembered
with a pang of self-reproach, that Father Orin was with them now and
waiting for him. He rose suddenly, saying that he must go, but a slight
noise at the door caused him to pause and turn. It was William Pressley
coming in, and Ruth went forward to meet him, and introduced him to the
doctor, who sat down again for a few moments. The two young men then
talked with one another as strangers do, of the current topics of the
day and the country, speaking mostly of the Shawnee danger--the one
subject then most earnestly and universally discussed throughout the
wilderness. The nearest approach to a personal tone was in William
Pressley's formal expression of thanks. Paul Colbert put these aside as
formally as they were offered, and in a moment more he got up to take
leave. Yet in that brief space the two men had begun to dislike each
other.
This was natural enough on the part of William Pressley. It is indeed
the first instinct of his kind toward any equal or superior. When a
man's or a woman's vanity is so great that it instinctively and
instantly levies on all within reach--demanding incense--nothing can be
so dislikeful as a bearing which refuses to swing the censer.
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