“That doesn’t sound like you,” he said, naturally surprised, I suppose, that I didn’t melt into his arms.
“Why not?” I inquired, noticing that he no longer cared to meet my eye.
“Well, some man has said that a hard soil makes a hard race,” I retorted, with a glance about at my ruined wheatlands. “Did you have a pleasant time in Chicago?”
He looked up quickly.
“I wasn’t in Chicago,” he promptly protested.
“Then that woman lied, after all,” I remarked, with a lump of Scotch granite where my heart ought to have been. For I could see by his face that he knew, without hesitation, the woman I meant.
“Isn’t that an unnecessarily harsh word?” he asked, trying, of course, to shield her to the last. And if he had not exactly winced, he had done the next thing to it.
“What would you call it?” I countered. It wouldn’t have taken a microphone, I suppose, to discover the hostility in my tone. “And would it be going too far to inquire just where you were?” I continued as I saw he had no intention of answering my first question.
“I was at the Coast,” he said, compelling himself to meet my glance.