"Anything you propose will meet with my entire support."
"Then hear me. The danger you feared so long ago is imminent. Father has learned of our engagement from the lips of Chesley Sykes. I have talked with Father. You can easily surmise what that interview involved. But a few minutes before Sykes had submitted a personal offer to the present rider of Bobs. The offer was declined respectfully if summarily. Father has backed his friend and forbids me you, Ned. I am to instantly and casually forget you. In the selfsame instant I am to foster the tenderest regard for Sykes. This very interview is a disobedience."
She paused, looking up at Ned, her face a compound of anxiety and mischief. Ned sent Darkey to Bobs' flank and threw his arm about the lithe little rider.
"Mary," said he, "you are a brave girl. Will you marry me to-day? This very day?"
"Hush, Ned!" was her cry as she placed her hand upon his lips. "You are stealing my fire. That is my proposition. Only I put it this way. Will you marry me not to-day or to-morrow but the day after?"
"I'll marry you to-day and to-morrow and the day after," was the happy response. "But why put it off?"
"Now I have broken the ice, Ned, it will be easier. I am a frightened little prairie chicken running for cover. I was going to ask you to do this trifling thing for me the day after to-morrow when you anticipated by two days. It is very good of my big farmer to ask no questions and to be willing even to advance dates, but I have a little to say in justification of this bold visit.
"Since my interview with Father the firm of Sykes and Sykes has become the firm of Sykes, McClure and Sykes. Last night Father informed me that if I throw down Chesley Sykes I therewith crash to the ground his whole brilliant future—that is Father's."
"You are in a hard place, Mary," said Ned solicitously. "It is troubling you terribly despite your brave front. You are grieving, I know."
"A little worried, Ned," was the simple acknowledgment. "It has been difficult and it will be. It is not Father's anger that has driven me to you. It is abject fear. I am afraid of Sykes—and Father. I turn down Sykes. It does not anger him. He remains congenial. I withstand Father and promise to wreck his whole career. He is scarcely disturbed. Why are they not provoked? Because they are not. They are confident of realizing the thing they want. Ned, I have become such a frightened little goose that I carry this."