Page:Owen Wister - The Virginian.djvu/159

Rh came suddenly severe, as she had done at Hoosic Junction. He should have a punishment to remember!

"You call yourself a man, I suppose," she said.

But he did not tremble in the least. Her fierceness filled him with delight, and the tender desire of ownership flooded through him.

"A grown-up, responsible man," she repeated.

"Yes, ma'am. I think so." He now sat down again.

"And you let them think that—that Mr. McLean— You dare not look me in the face and say that Mr. McLean did that last night!"

"I reckon I dassent."

"There! I knew it! I said so from the first!"

"And me a stranger to you!" he murmured.

It was his second broadside. It left her badly crippled. She was silent.

"Who did yu' mention it to, ma'am?"

She hoped she had him. "Why, are you afraid?" And she laughed lightly.

"I told 'em myself. And their astonishment seemed so genu-wine I'd just hate to think they had fooled me that thorough when they knowed it all along from you seeing me."

"I did not see you. I knew it must— Of course I did not tell any one. When I said I said so from the first, I meant—you can understand perfectly what I meant."

"Yes, ma'am."

Poor Molly was near stamping her foot. "And what sort of a trick," she rushed on, "was that to play? Do you call it a manly thing to frighten