“In a most offensive and insolent manner,” sneered Vance.
“Offensive to you, perhaps,” she commented, cheerfully; “but not to me. As I said before, I rather liked it. I like a fellow who has the nerve to take things by storm when he cannot get them otherwise.”
She smiled on Vance in the most tantalizing manner as she said this, and he well understood her meaning. He ground his teeth with impotent rage.
“If you liked it so well,” he panted, “you should not have screamed as you did.”
“That was an accident,” she declared. “Didn’t mean to do it, you know, but it slipped out.”
“By gum!” chuckled the youth from Vermont. “It don’t seem to me that Bart done anything so very bad. I think he was a purty gol-darn lucky feller!”
“I hardly think Mr. Merriwell, who is so rigid in regard to the deportment of the members of his company, can approve of the behavior of some of them,” said Vance, with something like a sneer.
At that Stella Stanley threw back her head and gave him a withering look.
“Is it possible you mean me by that?” she said.
“Not so much as Hodge,” mumbled the jealous actor, weakly.