O'Keefe thought that "tormentin' haste" in his position would be fatal and yet the streak of whimsey that ran through him brought a paradoxical answer.
"My hearth's cold over thar. I come ter borry fire."
He was watching her as he spoke, and now that he no longer stood under the disadvantage of comparison with Jack Halloway he was no mean figure of a man. One could not miss the fine, if slender, power of his long and shapely lines from broad shoulder to tapering waist. His hair curled crisply and incorrigibly and he bore himself with a lazy sort of grace, agile for all its indolence. Alexander could not be quite sure whether the eyes were insolent or humble. When he had stated his mission of "borrowing fire" he had used a quaint phrase, eloquent of a quainter custom. It had to do with that isolated life in a land where until recently matches were rare and when the hearth fire died one had to go to the neighbor's house and hasten back with a flaming fagot for its relighting.
"Ye don't seem ter hev ther drive of a man borryin' fire. Why didn't ye ask Joe. I heers him in thar."
"Hit's goin' home not comin' thet a man's got ter hasten with his fire," he reminded her. "I didn't ask Joe because—he hain't got ther kind of fire my heart needs, Alexander."
So her suspicion was true! He had been speaking, not literally, but in the allegory of a suitor and her gathering wrath burst.
"Then I hain't got hit fer ye nuther. Let yore h'arth stay cold, an' be damned ter ye—an' now begone right speedily!"
With pure effrontery the young man laughed. Into his voice he put a pretense of appeal, as he calmly stuffed his pipe with tobacco crumbs. "Alexander ye wouldn't deny a man such a plum needcessity es fire, would ye?" he questioned, though even as he said it he drew from his pocket a box of matches and struck one.
So he had made deliberate and calculated sport of her! Her anger saw in his presence itself only the insult of the first attack from those men who "would not be turned back," and once more the rage in her came to its boiling-point.
She wheeled and went into the house and when she came out her face was pale to the lips and her brows drawn in a resolute pucker, while in her hands she carried a cocked rifle.