Jim slipped his arm through his companion's, helping him along. "Sure you're not going to run away. Lay low for a spell, that's all you'll be doing. Old man Fay is crazy—stark, staring, roaring crazy. It isn't you, and it isn't Rosie; it's having to get out of here. It was bluff what I said a minute ago about the place being too small for his plant. He's dotty on these three old hothouses. My Lord! you'd think no one ever had hothouses before and never would again. You'd think it was the end of the world, to hear him talk. You'd die laughing. The fellow he'd like to put it over on is your old man! Gives me a mouthful about him three or four times a day—and it'd be a barr'l full of buckshot in the back if he could get at him. Lucky he's in Europe. But I'll calm him down, don't you fret; and I'll calm down Matt, once I get at him. Let me have two months—let me have a month!—and I'll have 'em coming to you like a gray squirrel comes for nuts."
Out in the roadway Claude made a last effort to react against his humiliation, doing it almost tearfully. "But, look here, Jim, I've got to marry Rosie—I've got to."
The Irishman in the young man was still in the ascendant as he wagged his head sympathetically. "Sure you've got to—if she wants it."
"Well, she does want it, doesn't she? She must have told you so, or you wouldn't know so much about it."
"She's told me all about it from seeding to sale, and it's God's truth I'm handing out to you—no bluff at all. This Rosie's another proposition."
"I'll marry her, whatever she is," Claude declared, bravely; "and I've got to see her, too."
Jim looked thoughtful. "It isn't so easy to see her because—Well, now, I'll tell you straight, Claude—because it makes her kind o' sick to think of you. Oh, that's nothing!" he hastened to add, on seeing a second convulsion pass across Claude's face. "Sure she'd feel the same about any one who'd done the like o' that to her, now wouldn't she? It isn't you at all—not any more than it 'd be me or anybody else."
"If I could see her," Claude said, weakly, "I'd—I'd explain."
"Ah, but you couldn't explain quick enough. That's where the trouble about that'd be. She'd be down on the floor in a faint before you'd be able to say knife. You couldn't get near her at all at all—not this Rosie—not if it was to explain away the ground beneath her feet."
"She'd get over that—" Claude began to plead.