"Well, you needn't begin to get excited," responded Ordway, "for I didn't accept, and you won't have to quarrel either with me or with Jasper Trend."
"There's one thing you may be sure of," said Banks with energy, "and that is that I'd quarrel with Jasper every time."
"In spite of Milly?" laughed Ordway.
"In spite of Milly," repeated Banks in an awed but determined voice; "she may manage my hair and my cravats and my life to come, but I'll be darned if she's going to manage my vote!"
"All the same I'm glad you can honestly stick to Jasper," said Ordway, "he counts on you now, doesn't he?"
"Oh, I suppose so," returned Banks, without enthusiasm; "at any rate, I think he'd rather she'd marry me than Brown."
There was a moment's silence in which the name brought no association into Ordway's consciousness. Then in a single flashing instant the truth leaped upon him, and the cornfields across the road surged up to meet his eyes like the waves of a high sea.
"Than whom?" he demanded in so loud a tone that Banks fell back a step and looked at him with blinking eyelids.
"Than marry whom?" asked Ordway for the second time, dropping his voice almost to a whisper before the blank surprise in the other's face.
"Oh, his name's Brown—Horatio Brown—I thought I'd told you," answered Banks, and he added a moment later, "you've met him, I believe."