"You see if I don't get you sent about your business from here," spluttered Sam, now thoroughly angry. "I'll tell Da you hender the wurruk." His eyes were full of water and Guy's were full of stars and of tears. Neither saw the fourth party near; but Yan did. There, not twenty yards away, stood William Raften, spectator of the whole affair—an expression not of anger but of infinite sorrow and disappointment on his face—not because they had quarrelled—no—he knew boy nature well enough not to give that a thought—but that his son, older and stronger than the other and backed by another boy, should be licked in fair fight by a thin, half-invalid.
It was as bitter a pill as he had ever had to swallow. He turned in silence and disappeared, and never afterward alluded to the matter.
[XV]
The Peace of Minnie
That night the two avoided each other. Yan ate but little, and to Mrs. Raften's kindly solicitous questions he said he was not feeling well.
After supper they were sitting around the table, the men sleepily silent, Yan and Sam moodily so. Yan had it all laid out in his mind now. Sam would make a one-sided report of the affair; Guy would sustain him. Raften himself was witness of Yan's violence.
The merry days at Sanger were over. He was doomed, and felt like a condemned felon awaiting the carrying out of the sentence. There was only one lively member of the group. That was little Minnie. She was barely three, but a great chatterbox. Like all children, she dearly loved a "secret," and one of her favourite tricks was to beckon to some one, laying her pinky finger on her pinker lips, and then when they stooped she would whisper in their ear, "Don't tell." That was all. It was her Idea of a "seek-it."