"Wot! afore folks?" asked Gabriel, looking down a little shamefully on the twining arms of his sister.
"Yes—in course—afore folks. Why, they want it to be known thet they're married."
"Olly," broke out Gabriel desperately, "your sister-in-law ain't thet kind of woman. She'd reckon thet kind o' thing was low."
But Olly only replied by casting a mischievous look at her brother, shaking her curls, and with the mysterious admonition, "Try it!" left him, and went back to Mrs. Conroy.
Happily for Gabriel, Mrs. Conroy did not offer an opportunity for the exhibition of any tenderness on Gabriel's part. Although she did not make any allusion to the past, and even utterly ignored any previous quarrel, she still preserved a certain coy demeanour toward him, that, while it relieved him of an onerous duty, very greatly weakened his faith in the infallibility of Olly's judgment. When, out of respect to that judgment, he went so far as to throw his arms ostentatiously around his wife's waist one Sunday, while perambulating the single long public street of One Horse Gulch, and that lady, with great decision, quietly slipped out of his embrace, he doubted still more.
"I did it on account o' what you said, Olly, and darn my skin if she seemed to like it at all, and even the boys hangin' around seemed to think it was queer. Jo Hobson snickered right out."
"When was it?" said Olly.
"Sunday."
Olly, sharply—"Where?"
Gabriel—"On Main Street."