man.

To tell the truth, her aunt had informed her that John Harrington was
coming that afternoon, and had told her he was an exceedingly able man, a
statement which at once roused Josephine's opposition to its fiercest
pitch. She thoroughly hated to be warned about people, to be primed as it
were with a dose of their superiority beforehand. It always prepared her
to dislike the admirable individual when he appeared. It seemed as though
it were taken for granted that she herself had not enough intelligence to
discover wit in others, and needed to be told of it with great
circumstance in order to be upon her good behavior. Consequently Josephine
began by disliking John. She thought he was a Philistine; his hair was too
straight, and besides, it was red; he shaved all his face, whereas the men
she liked always had beards; she liked men with black eyes, or blue--
John's were gray and hard; he spoke quietly, without expression, and she
liked men who were enthusiastic. After all, too, the things he said were
not very clever; anybody could have said them.

She meant to show her Boston aunt that she had no intention of accepting
Boston genius on faith. It was not her way; she liked to find out for
herself whether people were able or not, without being told, and if she
ascertained that John Harrington enjoyed a fictitious reputation for
genius it would amuse her to destroy it--or at all events to write a long
letter home to a friend, expressing her supreme opinion on that and other
matters.

John, on his part, did not very much care what impression he produced. He
never did on such occasions, and just now he was rendered doubly
indifferent by the fact that he was wishing himself somewhere else. True,
there was a certain novelty in being asked point-blank questions about his