"Tingling with the Increasing Desire to knock down
his Host and catch this Girl up in his Arms"
"Let me run this," said Rufus with bravado. "You'll find out later what you'll get from me, and it will be nothin' to complain of when once you're Mrs. Carder. You can have that fat porpoise or any other woman come to see you, and when you're ridin' 'em around in the new car I'm goin' to get you, they'll be green with envy. You'll see. Let me run this."
His absorption in Geraldine had distracted Carder's attention from the fact that he was not hearing the departure of that most satirically named engine of misery, "The Silent Traveler."
He strode to a window and saw Ben Barry mounting his machine close to where Pete was mowing the grass.
He hurried to the door. "Come here, you damned coot!" he yelled. And Pete dropped the mower and ambled up to the office-door.
"What did that man want of you?" he asked furiously.
"Wanted to know the shortest road to Keefe," replied Pete in his usual sullen tone.
"You lie!" exclaimed Rufus. If Ben Barry had looked like a dusty Sir Galahad to Geraldine, he had looked dangerously attractive to Carder, who cursed the luck that had made him invite the girl to his office on this particular afternoon. "You lie!" he repeated, and stepping back to his desk he seized a whip which lay along one side of it.