Page:Leon Wilson - Ruggles of Red Gap.djvu/318

304 ranting about things I hadn't meant to at all. I looked for another outburst from her, but to my amazement she flashed me a smile with a most enigmatic look back of it. She tossed her head, but resumed her wiping of the glass with a certain demureness. She spoke almost meekly:

"They're very old friends, and I'm sure they always act right. I don't see anything wrong in it, even if Buck Edwards has shown me a good deal of attention."

But this very meekness of hers seemed to arouse all the violence in my nature.

"I won't have it!" I said. "You have no right to receive presents from men. I tell you I won't have it! You've no right!"

"Haven't I?" she suddenly said in the most curious, cool little voice, her eyes falling before mine. "Haven't I? I didn't know."

It was quite chilling, her tone and manner. I was cool in an instant. Things seemed to mean so much more than I had supposed they did. I mean to say, it was a fair crumpler. She paused in her wiping of the glass but did not regard me. I was horribly moved to go to her, but coolly remembered that that sort of thing would never do.

"I trust I have said enough," I remarked with entirely recovered dignity.

"You have," she said.

"I mean I won't have such things," I said.

"I hear you," she said, and fell again to her work. I thereupon investigated an ice-box and found enough matter for complaint against the Hobbs boy to enable me to manage a dignified withdrawal to the rear. The remarkable creature was humming again as I left.