'Well, sir!' For the old gentleman began to suspect towards what he was drifting, but rejected the suspicion as too wild and improbable.
'Wal, the fact is, squire, Nim will have the two farms, an' the store, an' the bank shares—of course not all that till I die, but Daisy Burn at once: an'—an'—he's in a 'tarnal everlastin' state about your daughter Linda, the purtiest gal in the township, I guess.'
Mr. Wynn rose from his seat, his usually pale countenance deeply flushed. What! his moss-rose Linda—as often in a fond moment he named her—his pretty Linda, thought of in connection with this vulgar, cheating storekeeper's vulgar son? 'Sir, how dare you?' were all the words his lips framed, when Robert, beholding the scene from the other end of the board, came to the rescue.
'The fellow has been drinking,' was the most charitable construction Mr. Wynn could put upon Zack's astounding proposition. His dignity was cruelly outraged. 'Baiting the trap with his hateful knavish gains!' cried Linda's father. 'This is the result of the democracy of bush-life; the indiscriminate association with all classes of people that's forced on one. Any low fellow that pleases may ask your daughter in marriage!'
Robert walked up and down with him outside the building. Though sufficiently indignant himself, he tried to calm his father. 'Don't make the affair more public by immediate withdrawal,' he advised. 'Stay an hour or so longer at the bee, for appearance' sake. It's hardly likely the fellow will attempt to address you again, at least on that subject.' So the old gentleman very impatiently watched the log heaps piling, and the teams straining, and the 'grog-bos' going his rounds, for a while longer.
We left Andy Callaghan over his victim, with a flourishing shillelagh. Having spun him round, he stirred him up again with a few sharp taps; and it must be confessed that Nim showed very little fight for a man of his magnitude, but sneaked over the fence after a minute's bravado.
'Och, but it's myself that 'ud like to be batin' ye!' groaned Andy for the second time, most sincerely. 'Only I'm afeard if I began I wouldn't know how to lave off, 'twould be so pleasant, ye owdacious villain. Ha! ye'd throw the stick at me, would ye?' and Mr. Callaghan was across the fence in a twinkling. Whereupon Nim fairly turned tail, and fled ignominiously, after having ineffectually discharged a piece of timber, javelin-wise, at his enemy.
A loud peal of laughter, in a very masculine key, broke upon Andy's ear. It proceeded from the usually undemonstrative maiden Liberia, who was bringing a pail of water from the creek when her path was crossed by the flying pair. From that hour the tides of her feminine heart set in favour of the conqueror.
'Troth, an' I may as well let ye have the benefit of yer heels, ye mortal spalpeen,' said Andy, reining himself in. 'An' it's the father of a good thrashin' I could give ye for yer impidence. To think o' Miss Linda, that's one of the ould auncient Wynns of Dunore since Adam was a boy! I donno why I didn't pound him into smithereens when I had him so 'andy on the flat of his back—only for Miss Linda, the darlin' crathur, telling me not. Sure there isn't a peeler in the whole counthry, nor a jail neither, for a thousand mile. Now I wondher, av it was a thing I did bate him black an' blue, whose business would it be to 'rest me; an' is it before the masther I'd be brought to coort?'
Cogitating thus, and chewing the cud on the end of his sapling, Andy returned homewards leisurely. His young mistress was nowhere to be seen; so he picked up the hoe and finished her strawberry bed; and when he saw the elder Mr. Wynn approaching, he quietly walked off to Davidson's and took his place among the hive again, as if nothing had happened. Nor did the faithful fellow ever allude to the episode—with a rare delicacy judging that the young lady would prefer silence—except once that Robert asked him what had brought him to Cedar Creek so opportunely.