“Steer and all—you’ll see,” he declared. “You can’t afford to doubt me, any more than I could afford to doubt the power that beast represents. Look at me with your own eyes and you’ll see that I am as incapable as the red of deceit or double-dealing toward you. Trust me, unless—You don’t want to doubt me, do you, Jane?”
Evidently Mrs. Sturgis was not accustomed to being dragged out on the pavement fronting her town house—at any rate not in negligée. The protests which bubbled from her lips and spilled down the steps with this latest caprice of her daughter, however, were of no avail. Irene had a firm grip on her arm and defied any attempt to assert maternal authority with a cluster of long-stemmed red roses which she brandished in her free hand.
Although Jane’s lips had moved twice, as if from desire to make Pape some reply, she was deterred by the outburst from above. He, too, turned to meet the new issue, in this case a conventional matron forced to behave in an unconventional way. Her several glances were directed down at the steer, up at the windows of such fashionable neighbors as might or might not be peering through front blinds, across into the easy, amiable grin of the Westerner voted to be too “wild” in recent family council. Her attempt to discountenance him with a stony stare combined rather pitifully with the outraged decorum and flush of fright on her face.
“Mr. Pape, w-what does this m-menagerie mean?”
“It means, madame—” with his sombrero Pape dusted a section of the pavement cement in his bow—“that I have the honor of fulfilling your urgent request. In yonder bovine I present for your inspection a copy of the Stansbury-Pape escutcheon—verily the fruit of my family tree. I trust he may meet with your approval as a genealogical guarantee.”
“But Irene said—I must say that I—I don’t understand.”
“Ma’am, Irene herself doesn’t understand, therefore cannot explain. Pray allow me to elucidate.”
He included the rest as hearers by a mandatory glance, all except the perquisitory person. She was sidling, fascinated, toward what was to her the latest in love tokens.
Drops of curiosity were wearing away the stone of the matron’s stare.
“By bovine—it’s so long since I studied Latin—are you referring to that wicked-looking cow, young man?” she demanded.