“Different here. I be frightened.... Now go back and write some more of them dynamite pieces, Lady, and after the next issue of this here rag comes out—if it ever does—I’m goin’ to throw up breast-works and see if I can’t borrow me a machine gun.”
“Fiddlesticks!” said Carmel.
Evan Pell did not refer to her work until she invited his comment. Then he turned his eyes upon her with something of the old superciliousness in them and said, dryly, “What is done is done.”
“I gather you don’t approve.”
“I most certainly do not,” he said.
“Why,” he countered, “did you not discuss this step with me?”
“Why should I?” she answered, sharply.
“In order,” he said, “to receive an intelligent idea of the course of action to take.” He said this with flat finality, and turned his back. Thereafter Carmel sulked.
She had expected some result—beneficial. Just what result she had not envisaged. Perhaps she had expected some public ovation, some sign that Gibeon sided with her in her efforts to the end of law and order. If she had hoped for this, she was disappointed. Gibeon buzzed with excitement, whispered in corners, gathered in knots, but, such of its inhabitants as found reason to address her, studiously ignored the subject. Gibeon was manifestly uneasy.
If merely the selling of newspapers was her object, she accomplished that. The edition was exhausted before ten o’clock in the morning. No new flood of advertising came to take advantage of the increase in circulation.... She came to doubt her own judgment, and to wonder if she had not acted again on impulse. It was an unpleasant feeling—to know that those upon whom she most relied regarded her conduct with hostility.