Part 22

Fom looked up, still pressing her body hard against the tools in dispute, while Bep got to her feet, red-faced and panting. "We're not quarreling," said Florence, calmly.

Superintendent Warren Pemberton, still in his oilskins from a trip down the mine, looked down at her and gasped. He did not know the Madigan brunette twin, and actually thought she was lying. But Fom was never known to lie; she only pettifogged.

"You're not quarreling!"

"Nope."

"Didn't I see you with my own eyes?" he demanded, piqued.

"People don't see people quarreling," said Fom, didactically. "They hear them."

"Oh, that's it! Well, didn't I hear--"

"No, you didn't; for we're mad and don't speak to each other."

"But you're not quarreling?"

"Nope," repeated Fom, stoutly, "we're not."

Mr. Pemberton shook his head helplessly. "What are you doing?"

"I'm running a drift"--Fom misunderstood the drift of his question--"from the Silver King to the Diamond Heart, and the earth keeps coming down. Then Bep tries to make it harder by grabbing for the tools and--"

"Why don't you timber?" suggested Pemberton, gravely.

"'Cause I don't have to," answered Fom, quite as seriously.

"Oh, you don't!" Pemberton, a man with no sense of humor, had been unusually expansive; but he shrank angrily into himself now, as though from a cold douche. It took some time for one to get accustomed to Fom's way of instructing authorities upon the subjects which they were supposed to know most about.

"No, that's silly," remarked Fom, superbly. "If the ground's sticky enough, and you're not butter-fingered,"--with an insulting glance at Bep,--"you can manage all right."

"But I'm not butter-fingered and I always timber." Warren Pemberton was a slow man, but a dogged one; the elusiveness of this pert child irritated him.

"That's 'cause you don't know any better," came from the expert, who had returned to her task, the excited flourishes of her uplifted legs betraying its difficulties.

"You're a little fool!" declared the superintendent. "Do you know who I am? My name's Pemberton, and I--"

"Why don't you make your wife leave Crosby alone, then?" demanded Fom, without seeming much impressed.

Warren Pemberton looked down upon her little body with an expression that made Bep wonder why he refrained from stamping upon it.

"You don't think Mrs. Pemberton knows her business, either?" His ruddy, full face looked apoplectic.

"Nope. Sissy says if she was Crosby she'd run away to sea. And she's going to put him up to it, too, if--"

But Bep, frightened by the growing anger in the great man's face, interposed. "Shall I shut her up for you, Mr. Pemberton?" she asked.

"What--what d' ye say? I wish to God you would, or that somebody could!"

"Fom," said Bep, authoritatively, "shut up!"

Fom jumped to her feet. There was appeal, wrath, rebellion in her crimson face. She opened her lips as if to protest.

"Shut up, Fom," repeated Bep, distinctly. "I said shut up."