“Then your wife is not here?” said Mr. Ford abstractedly.
“She war at church. She reckoned that I'd do to look arter Cressy—she bein', so to speak, under conviction. D'ye mind walkin' this way a bit; I want to speak a word with ye?” He put his maimed hand through the master's arm, after his former fashion, and led him to a corner.
“Did ye happen to see Seth Davis about yer?”
“I believe I saw him a moment ago,” returned Mr. Ford half contemptuously.
“Did he get off anythin' rough on ye?”
“Certainly not,” said the master haughtily. “Why should he dare?”
“That's so,” said McKinstry meditatively. “You had better keep right on in that line. That's your gait, remember. Leave him—or his father—it's the same thing—to ME. Don't YOU let yourself be roped in to this yer row betwixt me and the Davises. You ain't got no call to do it. It's already been on my mind your bringin' that gun to me in the Harrison row. The old woman hadn't oughter let you—nor Cress either. Hark to me, Mr. Ford! I reckon to stand between you and both the Davises till the cows come home—only—mind YOU give him the go-by when he happens to meander along towards you.”
“I'm very much obliged to you,” said Ford with disproportionately sudden choler; “but I don't propose to alter my habits for a ridiculous school-boy whom I have dismissed.” The unjust and boyish petulance of his speech instantly flashed upon him, and he felt his cheek burn again.
McKinstry regarded him with dull, red, slumbrous eyes. “Don't you go to lose your best holt, Mr. Ford—and that's kam. Keep your kam—and you've allus got the dead wood on Injin Springs. I ain't got it,” he continued, in his slowest, most passionless manner, “and a row more or less ain't much account to me—but YOU, you keep your kam.” He paused, stepped back, and regarding the master, with a slight wave of his crippled hand over his whole person, as if indicating some personal adornment, said, “It sets you off!”
He nodded, turned, and re-entered the ball-room. Mr. Ford, without trusting himself to further speech, elbowed his way through the crowded staircase to the street. But even there his strange anger, as well as the equally strange remorse, which had seized him in McKinstry's presence, seemed to evaporate in the clear moonlight and soft summer air. There was the river-bank, with the tremulous river glancing through the dreamy mist, as they had seen it from the window together. He even turned to look back on the lighted ball-room, as if SHE might have been looking out, too. But he knew he should see her again to-morrow, and he hurriedly put aside all reserve, all thought of the future, all examination of his conduct, to walk home enwrapped in the vaguer pleasure of the past. Rupert Filgee, to whom he had never given a second thought, now peacefully slumbering beside his baby brother, had not gone home in more foolish or more dangerous company.