Giant by Edna Ferber Page A

persistently. “Yes, but how many acres, actually? I’d like to hear those figures really rolling out and know that it’s authentic. I never could bring myself to believe them. A million? Is that right? A million acres?”
    Jordan Benedict felt his face reddening. Still, a straight question like that, aimed at a man’s head. You had to answer it or insult a man at your host’s table. He had seen men killed for much less. There was a lull in the table talk. He looked squarely into Leslie’s eyes, she smiled at him ever so faintly as a mother smiles at a shy child, in encouragement. He heard himself saying, “Something over two million acres. Two million and a half, to be exact.”
    Doctor Lynnton nodded interestedly. “Yes, I remember my father saying something about it when I was a young fellow. It used to be four or five million acres, wasn’t it? Years ago.”
    “Yes.” God damn the man and his family and his friends.
    “There you are, Nicky!” yelped the man who originally had asked the questions. “I guess that makes you look like a sharecropper.” Nicky shrugged his shoulders again and spread his hands in deprecation and smiled at Leslie Lynnton beseechingly.
    Mrs. Lynnton’s head had been slightly turned away from the table to speak over her shoulder to a servant. She turned now to look at Jordan Benedict. It was a stunned look, the look of one who has heard but who rejects the words as incredible. She turned her head again automatically to speak to the servant, then again she faced forward with a jerk to stare at Jordan as though the sense of the words had just now penetrated. Her mouth was open before she began to speak.
    “How many acres did you say, Mr. Benedict?”
    “He said two and a half million acres, Mama,” Leslie said with exquisite distinctness. “And you should see the greedy look on your face.”
    But Mrs. Lynnton was not one to be diverted from her quarry, once she had the scent.
    “Are there,” she persisted, “any cities on the premises?”
    Choking a little, “Why, yes ma’am, there are a few.”
    “Do you own those too?”
    The company could no longer be contained. A roar went up. Bick Benedict’s reply, “Not rightly own, no ma’am,” was lost in the waves of laughter. Mrs. Lynnton turned her gaze upon her husband then. Her expression was one of the most bitter reproach and rage.
    “Nobody owns a city,” Bick persisted virtuously. Controller of every vote in the town of Benedict, and most of the county.
    From across the table Leslie said, “How about Tammany?”
    “Oh, now, Leslie!” pleaded a man seated beside Mrs. Lynnton. A New Yorker, Bick decided not very astutely. And anyway, what does a woman want to go and get mixed up in political talk for?
    There followed, then, in that household between the hours of ten-thirty P.M . and seven A.M . three scenes which made up in variety what they may have lacked in dramatic quality.
    At ten o’clock the dinner guests departed, bound for the Hunt Ball. Jordan Benedict declined politely to go, pleading no proper clothes and a very early Washington appointment. At ten-thirty Doctor Lynnton was in his own bedroom after a half hour’s chat and a nightcap with Jordan Benedict. At ten-thirty Mrs. Lynnton opened fire.
    “Well, Doctor Lynnton, I must say you seem to care very little about what becomes of your daughters!”
    “What have the girls done now, Nancy?”
    “It’s you!” Then, at his look of amazement, “Bringing that Benedict here and never telling me a word about him. Not a syllable.”
    “Why, Nancy, he’s a nice enough young fella. Texans are different. You can’t judge a man by his hat. They’re used to big open ways, lots of everything. He’s a nice enough young fella.”
    “Nice! He said he owns two million acres of land! And more!”
    “You’re not going to hold that against him, are you?”
    “Horace Lynnton, you know very well that there isn’t a young man in Virginia, Washington, Maryland and