“It wouldn’t take five minutes.”
“Mr. Farron is too weak to see you.”
Marty made a strange grating sound in his throat, and Adelaide asked like a queen bending from the throne:
“What seems to be the matter, Burke?”
“Why,”—Burke turned upon her the flare of his light, fierce eyes,—“they have it on me on the dock that as soon as he comes back he means to bounce me.”
“To bounce you,” repeated Adelaide, and she almost smiled as she thought of that poor exhausted figure up-stairs.
“I don’t care if he does or not,” Marty went on. “I’m not so damned stuck on the job. There’s others.”
“There are maidens in Scotland more lovely by far,” murmured Adelaide.
Again he scowled, feeling the approach of something hostile to him.
“What’s that?” he asked, surmising that she was insulting him.