“Of course, but I mean now.”
“How do you explain the change, Wade?”
“The chap ain’t a fool; he’s took notice of our warnin’s.”
“I wasn’t aware that we had given him any.”
“Not ’zactly in words, but every time I’ve met him with the gal, I give the leftenant a scowl. Once I come purty near shakin’ my fist at him; he’s obsarved it all and is wise in time.”
“I think there is ground for what you say,” remarked the parson, anxious to be convinced of the hoped-for fact; “what I base my belief on is that the leftenant doesn’t accompany her on her little riding trips as often as her father or you or I: that is a sure barometer, according to my judgment. Still I have sometimes feared from the way she talks and acts that she thinks more of him than is right.”
“Nothing of the kind! She treats him as she does everybody else; the leftenant is the friend of the cap and the leftenant give her the dog that is the size of a meetin’ house and the pony hardly as big as the dog, but 150 she doesn’t think half as much of him as of you and me; how can she?” demanded Ruggles, sitting bolt upright and spreading his hand like a lawyer who has uttered an unanswerable argument; “hain’t she knowed us a blamed sight longer than him?”
“You are correct; I didn’t think of that.”
How eagerly we accept the argument, flimsy as it may be, which accords with our wishes!
“When I feel sorter ugly over my ’spicions,” continued Ruggles; “I jest reflect that we’ve knowed the gal ever since she was a baby and her father tumbled down a hundred feet onto the roof of the Heavenly Bower, with her in his arms in the middle of that howlin’ blizzard,––when I think of that I say–––”