Something of this must have shown in my face, for she was beginning to regard me curiously. I gathered my scattered wits and started to make some attempt at conversation, but the man with the shoulder-straps forestalled me.
"Really, we must go, Miss Rowan, or we shall be late for luncheon," he drawled. The insolent tone of him was like having one's face slapped, and it didn't pass over Lyn's head by any means. I thought to myself that if he had set out to entrench himself in her good graces, he was taking the poorest of all methods to accomplish that desirable end.
"Just a moment, major," she said. "Are you going to be here any length of time, Sarge?"
"A day or so," I responded shortly. I didn't feel overly cheerful with all that bad news simmering in my brain-pan, and in addition I had conceived a full-grown dislike for the "major" and his I-am-superior-to-you attitude.
"Then come and see me this afternoon if you can. I'm staying with Mrs. Stone. Don't forget, now—I have a thousand things I want to talk about. Good-bye." And she smiled and turned away with the uniformed snob by her side.
MacRae had loitered purposely, and I overtook him in a few rods.
"Well," I blurted out, as near angry as I ever got at MacRae in all the years I'd known him, "you're a high-headed cuss, confound you! Is it a part of your new philosophy of life to turn your back on every one that you ever cared anything for?"
He shrugged his shoulders tolerantly. "What did you expect of me?"
"You might have—oh, well, I suppose you'll go your own gait, regardless," I sputtered. "That's your privilege. But I don't see how you had the nerve to pass her up that way. Especially since that Stony Crossing deal."
Mac took a dozen steps before he answered me.