It had been an exciting drama to the Marshall children as long as it
lasted. They had looked with pride at an abominable reproduction of
their father's photograph in the evening paper of La Chance, and they
had added an acquaintance with the manners of newspaper reporters to
their already very heterogeneous experience with callers of every
variety; but of real anxiety the episode had brought them nothing.
As to that same extraordinary assortment of visitors at the Marshall
house, one of the University co-eds had said facetiously that you
met there every sort of person in the world, from spiritualists to
atheists--everybody except swells. The atheist of her dictum was the
distinguished and misanthropic old Professor Kennedy, head of
the Department of Mathematics, whose ample means and high social
connections with the leading family of La Chance made his misanthropy
a source of much chagrin to the faculty ladies, and who professed
for the Marshalls, for Mrs. Marshall in particular, a wrong-headed
admiration which was inexplicable to the wives of the other
professors. The faculty circle saw little to admire in the Marshalls.
The spiritualist of the co-ed's remark was, of course, poor foolish
Cousin Parnelia, the children's pet detestation, whose rusty clothes
and incoherent speech they were prevented from ridiculing only by
stern pressure from their mother.
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