Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/92

 "Now, look here, you little cougar kitten!" the lawyer warned. "You cut out this movie stuff. I'm not going to have you spying round on me. I can take care of myself. Besides, it's not nice, Lahleet—spying on your friends that way. It was luck, of course, that Adam John was around last night—by George, it was! And I'm grateful as a dog to him and you. But that sort of thing won't happen again.

"You must think of me as your friend—a thousand times your friend for what you and Adam did for me last night; and—especially, first and forever, you must put out of your head these absurd suspicions about the Bolands."

But the soft black eyes hardened at the name, and Harrington noticed it.

"Now, listen," he commanded very gravely, shaking his finger till almost it smote her little nose. "Listen!"

The girl's manner became dutifully attentive while Harrington expounded to her very clearly and earnestly and glowingly, with necessary elaborations of detail, all that great project for the benefit of the Shell Point Indians which John Boland had committed to him. The little woman listened at first wonderingly, then doubtingly, battling each point, but finally contritely, with a shamed light in her eyes.

"I'll help you!" she exclaimed impulsively, thrusting a warm little hand into his. "I'll help you. We'll get the signature of every member of the tribe within two weeks."

"Within two weeks?" glowed Henry. "Mr. Boland thought that might take two or three years."

The girl smiled, her accustomed pose of self-assurance quite reëstablished. "We can do it in two weeks,"