“Married; just as he is ready to enjoy his youth and not even out of the university yet—and only twenty-one. What do you mean?” she demanded indignantly.
“That a blaze-faced horse and a red-headed man are both vain things for safety,” he retorted.
“Do you know anything wrong about George?” she demanded, after a gasping pause.
“No.”
“A single thing?”
“Not a single thing. I was merely stating a natural fact.”
She had risen, a little, slim, fiery-eyed woman. She drew herself up. He watched her ascend. He refused to quail beneath the spark in her eye.
“Mr. Cutter,” she began ominously, because she gave him this title only when she was ominous, “when you married me I had red hair. My hair is still red.”
“Yes, my dear; but you were a girl. I said a man. I meant a young man with red hair. There is all the latitudes and longitudes in life between the one and the other. If you were a red-haired young man, I should think twice before I’d give a daughter of mine in marriage to you. But you will recall that I had black hair,” he concluded, laughing.
A father who would traduce his own son for inheriting hair the color of his mother’s and without cause—well, she could not understand such a father. Whereupon she left the room in high dudgeon, but really to go and look for this son. Her confidence in him had not been shaken, but she was anxious without reason, which is the keenest anxiety from which women suffer.