"You'd better not abate any of your daring; you'll need it all when we get back," laughed Gertrude, speaking far better than she knew.
"To take the consequences of my impudence?"
"Yes. You don't know my father; he is steel and ice when he is angry."
Remembering the object-lesson on the station platform in Denver, Brockway ventured to dissent from this, though he was politic enough not to do so openly.
"You think he will be very angry, then?"
"Indeed I don't—I know it."
"I'm sorry; but I'm afraid he will be angrier yet, before long."
"Why?"
"You read my message: I asked him to answer at Beaver Brook. He'll be pretty sure to send you a peremptory order to turn back from Forks Creek, won't he?"
"Why, of course he will; and I'll have to go back, after all—I sha'n't dare disobey. Oh, why didn't you make it impossible, while you were doing it?"