"Gil—" the girl got out the first syllable of his name, and no more; for her little handkerchief was at her pretty nose.
"I'm sorry," said Gilbert, gallantly, going to her. "Please don't feel badly about it."
"Don't—don't speak to me!" Angela sniffed, and stamped her dainty foot. "Don't look at me! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you all!" Blinded with rage and tears, she crossed the room, and stumbled directly into Uncle Henry's chair, and all but tipped him over. "Red" followed her, solicitously.
"Now, Angela—" he said, and tried to grasp her arm. "Remember, I'm here!"
But all the thanks he got was a wild, "Get out of my way!" and he found himself pushed aside, into a corner. Another of her unsuspected tantrums!
"My God!" ejaculated Uncle Henry, furious at Angela's accident, which so directly concerned himself, "but everybody's unreasonable to-day!" He turned harshly on his nephew. "You make me sick, you! Here am I doing my gol darndest to save the mess you've made, and you won't even—" He broke off, unable, in his wrath, to continue. His eye lit on Hardy. "Look here," he cried, in desperation, "ain't there no way out of this thing? It was my money that bought this ranch, you know. And everybody knows it! The last ten thousand dollars I had in the world!" There was a sob in his voice on the last words.
Hardy looked at him, but with no pity in his gaze. "That's your lookout, Smith. Everybody for himself—that's my motto."
"And you'd throw me, old and sick, a invalid, out into the streets?" Uncle Henry whined. No one could get more pathos into his tones than Uncle Henry when he wanted to do so.
"No; I'd let you wheel yourself out," Jasper Hardy, again the literal-minded Hardy, said. It was one of the meanest remarks that even he had ever made.