Page:Harold Titus--Timber.djvu/57

Rh "Th' last time I was here, you didn't ask me to sit down."

"You remember very well."

"Yeah. If you thought I was goin' to forget, you was fooled. Remember? I'll say I do!" He laughed shortly and licked his lips; his glittering eyes were steady on her face and most unpleasant. "That's why I'm here tonight, because I remember and want you to remember.—I told you that day I wouldn't forget, that you'd see th' time when you'd wish you'd gone a little slower."

A flush whipped across the girl's face but she did not speak; only settled her lips in a tighter line and watched him expectantly.

"I give you all the show there was," he went on bitterly; "I come here like an honest man would; I offered you a good home an' a respected name, an' when you wouldn't have any of me you wasn't satisfied to turn me down, but had to set your damned dog on me an' spread th' story to th' country."

He swallowed vehemently.

"You may recall," she said evenly, "that it was necessary to turn Pauguk on you to avoid—ugly things."

"Yeah. That's what you think. I wouldn't touched you, wouldn't hurt a hair of your head. Didn't I come here to ask you to marry me?"

"I gathered that. You were drunk."

He fidgeted a moment before her scorn, then burst out: "That ain't what I come for, to go over all that again. I just wanted to remind you that I said then you'd live to regret it. Well, you have. "

He hitched the package under his arm closer against his side and tapped it.