"He's trunk jes' now," said the child. Then she reached her face up to Eleanor's confidentially. The little teeth were very unclean and the breath was very garlicky, indeed. "He's goin' t' be a dummy," she whispered with a gurgle of childish glee, "un' he says he'll easily hold 'em up for twenty thousand without doin' a thing fur five years but whuttle un' sput."
"A dummy? Oh," said Eleanor.
Even the driver relaxed enough to flick the tandem grays with his whip and permit a twisted smile to play round the tobacco wad in his cheek.
They ate their late supper in the Ranch House by lamp light, her father scarcely uttering a word, the evening paper still sticking out of his coat pocket.
"I know this sheep affair has been a horrible, hideous loss," she said.
"Is that what's worrying you, father?"
MacDonald shoved back from the table.
"Pah, that's nothing," he said.
He stood waiting till the German cook had removed the dishes. Then he drew the paper from his pocket.
"There's something here I'm sorry you'll have to know," he said. "You won't understand how low the meaning of most of it is; but I'm sorry they hit you to try and hurt me."
He threw himself down in a big leather chair. She took the paper mechanically and sat on the arm of the chair to read. She read slowly and deliberately to the end. Then she re-read both columns; and the paper fell from her hands. She did not know it, but the same suppressed fury was blazing in her face as she had seen on his at the stage door.