“And I know you really don’t want to marry me,” she went on in a voice of appeal, of confidence in his manhood, in his friendliness for her, his childhood playmate.
If Richmond had been standing behind his daughter, making menacing faces at Peter over her shoulder, that sore-beset, young man could not have felt him more curdlingly. “You don’t know anything of the kind,” he blustered. “Don’t you dare tell your father anything like that.”
She scrutinized him. “You seem to have father on the brain.... Peter—Hanky—what has he been saying to you?”
“Nothing,” lied Peter shiftily. “Not a word.”
“That isn’t true, Hanky. Is it?”
He hung his head.
“Own up. He’s been—threatening you?”
“Now, look here, Beatrice—you are trying to get me into trouble,” pleaded and protested Hanky. “I haven’t said a word about your father’s having spoken to me of you.”
“What has he been threatening?” persisted the girl, her hand on his arm. “You can trust me, Hanky. You know, I keep my mouth shut.”
“I’ve got nothing to tell,” he insisted with a kind of whining doggedness. “All I say is, I want to marry you. If you’re stuck on another man and won’t marry me I can’t help it. But I want to marry you.”