“Jist a few drops,” said Red Mick gloomily. “Do us no good at all. Things is looking terrible bad, so they are. But we want to see ye—” and here he dropped his voice, rose, and cautiously closed the door—“Peggy here, Mrs. Grant, d’ye see,”—Mick got the name out without an effort—“she wants to see ye about making a claim on the estate. ’Tis time she done somethin’. All these years left to shift for herself—”
Here Blake broke in on him. He meant to probe Peggy’s case thoroughly, and knew that it would be no easy matter to get at the truth while she had Red Mick alongside to prompt her. He had not dealt with the mountain folk for nothing, and handled his clients in a way that would astonish a more conservative practitioner.
“Mick,” he said, “You go over to Isaacstein’s store and wait till I send for you.”
“I want Mick to be wid me,” began Peggy.
Blake blazed up. He knew that he must keep his ascendancy over these wild people by force of determination.
“You heard what I said,” he thundered, turning fiercely on Peggy. “You want this and you want that! It’s not what you want, it’s what I want! You do what you’re told. If you don’t—I won’t help you. Mick, you go over to the store, and wait till I send for you.” And Mick shambled off.
Peggy, still inclined to be defiant, settled herself in her chair. She had battled in North Queensland so long that she neither feared nor respected anybody; but her native shrewdness told her she had all to gain and nothing to lose by doing what her lawyer advised.
“Now, Peggy,” he said, “do you want to make a claim against William Grant’s estate?”
“Yis.”
“On the ground that you’re his widow?”