“I am quite ready now--I am quite ready,” she cried, terrified to let the opportunity slip. He nodded at her again, and waved his hand with a smile. “Come along, Bob, come along; let us leave her in quiet. To-night will be soon enough to settle all that--to-night or--another time.” He took Rob by the arm, and pushed his reluctant and half-resisting figure out of the room. Robert was sullen and indisposed to his usual submission.
“Let me go,” he said, shaking off the hand on his arm; “do you think I’m going to be pushed about like a go-cart?”
“If you’re a go-cart, I wish you’d let me slip into you,” said the other. It was not a very great joke, but Robert at another moment would have hailed it with a shout of laughter. He received it only with a shrug of his shoulders now.
“I wish you’d make up your mind and do something,” he said.
“I have: the first thing is to see who that woman is----”
“A woman! when you’ve got to run for your life.”
“Do you think I mean any nonsense, you fool? She’s not a woman, she’s a danger. Man alive, can’t you see? She’ll have to be squared somehow. And look here, Bob,” he said suddenly, putting his arm through that of his friend’s, who retained his reluctant attitude--“don’t sulk, you ass: ain’t we in the same boat--get all you can out of the old girl. We’ll have to make tracks, I suppose--and a lot of money runs away in that. Get everything you can out of her. She may cool down and repent, don’t you see? Strike, Bob, while the iron’s hot. The old girl----”
“Look here, I’ll not have her called names; neither mother, as if you had any right to her--nor--nor any other. We’ve had enough of that. I’ll not take any more of it from you, Lew!”
“Oh, that’s how it is!” said the other coolly, with a sneer. “Then I beg to suggest to you, my friend Bob, that the respectable lady we’re talking of may repent; and that if you’re not a fool, and won’t take more energetic measures, you’ll strike, don’t you see, while the iron is hot.”
Rob gave his friend a look of sullen wrath, and then disengaged his arm and turned away.
“You’ll find me in Andrew’s bower, among the flower-pots,” Lew called after him, and whistling a tune, went off behind the house to the garden, where in the shade Andrew kept his tools and all the accessories of his calling. He had no good of his ain tool-house, since thae two were about, Andrew complained every day.