Part 8

“That's bone-settin', and a nat'ral gift,” returned Sharpe, as triumphantly as his habitual depression would admit; “it ain't conceit and finikin got out o' books! Well,” he added, after a pause, “wot's happened?”

Minty's face slightly changed. “Nothin'; I kem back to get some things,” she said shortly, moving away.

“And ye saw HIM?”

“Ye-e-s,” drawled Minty, carelessly, still retreating.

“Bixby was along here about noon. He says the stranger was suthin' high and mighty in his own country, and them 'Frisco millionaires are quite sweet on him. Where are ye goin'?”

“In the house.”

“Well, look yer, Minty. Now that you're here, ye might get up a batch o' hot biscuit for supper. Dinner was that promiscous and experimental to-day, along o' Richelieu's nat'ral foolin', that I think I could git outside of a little suthin' now, if only to prop up a kind of innard sinkin' that takes me. Ye ken tell me the news at supper.”

Later, however, when Mr. Sharpe had quitted his forge for the night and, seated at his domestic board, was, with a dismal presentiment of future indigestion, voraciously absorbing his favorite meal of hot saleratus biscuits swimming in butter, he had apparently forgotten his curiosity concerning Mainwaring and settled himself to a complaining chronicle of the day's mishaps. “Nat'rally, havin' an extra lot o' work on hand and no time for foolin', what does that ornery Richelieu get up and do this mornin'? Ye know them ridiklus specimens that he's been chippin' outer that ledge that the yearth slipped from down the run, and litterin' up the whole shanty with 'em. Well, darn my skin! if he didn't run a heap of 'em, mixed up with coal, unbeknowned to me, in the forge, to make what he called a 'fire essay' of 'em. Nat'rally, I couldn't get a blessed iron hot, and didn't know what had gone of the fire, or the coal either, for two hours, till I stopped work and raked out the coal. That comes from his hangin' round that saw-mill in the woods, and listenin' to Bradley's high-falutin' talk about rocks and strata and sich.”

“But Bradley don't go a cent on minin', Pop,” said Minty. “He sez the woods is good enough for him; and there's millions to be made when the railroad comes along, and timber's wanted.”

“But until then he's got to keep hisself, to pay wages, and keep the mill runnin'. Onless it's, ez Bixby says, that he hopes to get that Englishman to rope in some o' them 'Frisco friends of his to take a hand. Ye didn't have any o' that kind o' talk, did ye?”

“No; not THAT kind o' talk,” said Minty.

“Not THAT kind o' talk!” repeated her father with aggrieved curiosity, “Wot kind, then?”

“Well,” said Minty, lifting her black eyes to her father's; “I ain't no account, and you ain't no account either. You ain't got no college education, ain't got no friends in 'Frisco, and ain't got no high-toned style; I can't play the pianner, jabber French, nor get French dresses. We ain't got no fancy 'Shallet,' as they call it, with a first-class view of nothing; but only a shanty on dry rock. But, afore I'D take advantage of a lazy, gawky boy--for it ain't anything else, though he's good meanin' enough--that happened to fall sick in MY house, and coax and cosset him, and wrap him in white cotton, and mother him, and sister him, and Aunt Sukey him, and almost dry-nuss him gin'rally, jist to get him sweet on me and on mine, and take the inside track of others--I'D be an Injin! And if you'd allow it, Pop, you'd be wuss nor a nigger!”

“Sho!” said her father, kindling with that intense gratification with which the male receives any intimation of alien feminine weakness. “It ain't that, Minty, I wanter know!”

“It's jist that, Pop; and I ez good ez let 'em know I seed it. I ain't a fool, if some folks do drop their eyes and pertend to wipe the laugh out of their noses with a handkerchief when I let out to speak. I mayn't be good enough kempany--”

“Look yer, Minty,” interrupted the blacksmith, sternly, half rising from his seat with every trace of his former weakness vanished from his hardset face; “do you mean to say that they put on airs to ye--to MY darter?”

“No,” said Minty quickly; “the men didn't; and don't you, a man, mix yourself up with women's meannesses. I ken manage 'em, Pop, with one hand.”

Mr. Sharpe looked at his daughter's flashing black eyes. Perhaps an uneasy recollection of the late Mrs. Sharpe's remarkable capacity in that respect checked his further rage.

“No. Wot I was sayin',” resumed Minty, “ez that I mayn't be thought by others good enough to keep kempany with baronetts ez is to be--though baronetts mightn't object--but I ain't mean enough to try to steal away some ole woman's darling boy in England, or snatch some likely young English girl's big brother outer the family without sayin' by your leave. How'd you like it if Richelieu was growed up, and went to sea,--and it would be like his peartness,--and he fell sick in some foreign land, and some princess or other skyulged HIM underhand away from us?”

Probably owing to the affair of the specimens, the elder Sharpe did not seem to regard the possible mesalliance of Richelieu with extraordinary disfavor. “That boy is conceited enough with hair ile and fine clothes for anything,” he said plaintively. “But didn't that Louise Macy hev a feller already--that Captain Greyson? Wot's gone o' him?”

“That's it,” said Minty: “he kin go out in the woods and whistle now. But all the same, she could hitch him in again at any time if the other stranger kicked over the traces. That's the style over there at The Lookout. There ain't ez much heart in them two women put together ez would make a green gal flush up playin' forfeits. It's all in their breed, Pop. Love ain't going to spile their appetites and complexions, give 'em nose-bleed, nor put a drop o' water into their eyes in all their natural born days. That's wot makes me mad. Ef I thought that Loo cared a bit for that child I wouldn't mind; I'd just advise her to make him get up and get--pack his duds out o' camp, and go home and not come back until he had a written permit from his mother, or the other baronet in office.”

“Looks sorter ef some one orter interfere,” said the blacksmith, reflectively. “'Tain't exackly a case for a vigilance committee, tho' it's agin public morals, this sorter kidnappin' o' strangers. Looks ez if it might bring the country into discredit in England.”

“Well, don't YOU go and interfere and havin' folks say ez my nose was put out o' jint over there,” said Minty, curtly. “There's another Englishman comin' up from 'Frisco to see him to-morrow. Ef he ain't scooped up by Jenny Bradley he'll guess there's a nigger in the fence somewhere. But there, Pop, let it drop. It's a bad aig, anyway,” she concluded, rising from the table, and passing her hands down her frock and her shapely hips, as if to wipe off further contamination of the subject. “Where's Richelieu agin?”

“Said he didn't want supper, and like ez not he's gone over to see that fammerly at the Summit. There's a little girl thar he's sparkin', about his own age.”

“His own age!” said Minty, indignantly. “Why, she's double that, if she's a day. Well--if he ain't the triflinest, conceitednest little limb that ever grew! I'd like to know where he got it from--it wasn't mar's style.”

Mr. Sharpe smiled darkly. Richelieu's precocious gallantry evidently was not considered as gratuitous as his experimental metallurgy. But as his eyes followed his daughter's wholesome, Phyllis-like figure, a new idea took possession of him: needless to say, however, it was in the line of another personal aggrievement, albeit it took the form of religious reflection.

“It's curous, Minty, wot's foreordained, and wot ain't. Now, yer's one of them high and mighty fellows, after the Lord, ez comes meanderin' around here, and drops off--ez fur ez I kin hear--in a kind o' faint at the first house he kems to, and is taken in and lodged and sumptuously fed; and, nat'rally, they gets their reward for it. Now wot's to hev kept that young feller from coming HERE and droppin' down in my forge, or in this very room, and YOU a tendin' him, and jist layin' over them folks at The Lookout?”

“Wot's got hold o' ye, Pop? Don't I tell ye he had a letter to Jim Bradley?” said Minty, quickly, with an angry flash of color in her cheek.