"Why don't you know?" If there were a scowl to go with the query, Raymer could not see it.
"I'll be frank with you again, Kenneth. What little sentiment there is in me leans pretty heavily that way. You have been with her a good bit and you know her—know how she appeals to any man with a drop of red blood in him. But I'm twenty-eight years old and well past the time when the young man's fancy lightly turns—and all that. I can't ignore the—the—well, the proprieties, you might say, though that isn't exactly the word."
"You mean that Margery Grierson doesn't measure up to the requirements of the Wahaskan Four Hundred?" There was satirical scorn in the observation, but Raymer did not perceive it.
"Oh, I don't know as you would put it quite that baldly," he protested. "But you see, when it comes to marrying and settling down and raising a family, you have to look at all sides of the thing. The father, as we all know, is a cold-blooded old werewolf; the mother nobody knows anything about save that—happily, in all probability—she isn't living. And there you are. Yet I won't deny that there are times when I'm tempted to shut my eyes and take the high dive, anyway—at the risk of splashing a lot of good people who would doubtless be properly scandalized."
By this time Griswold was gripping the arms of his chair savagely and otherwise trying to hold himself down; but this, too, Raymer could not know.
"You have reason to believe that it rests wholly with you, I suppose?" came from the tilting chair after a little pause. "Miss Grierson is only waiting for you to speak?"
"That's a horrible question to ask a man, Kenneth—even in the dark. If I say yes to it, it can't sound any other way than boastful and—and caddish. Yet I honestly believe that— Oh, hang it all! can't you see how impossible you're making it, old man?"
"Not impossible; only a trifle difficult," was the qualifying rejoinder. "It is easier from this on. That is the peaceful way out of the shop trouble for you, Raymer. When you can go to Jasper Grierson and tell him you are going to marry his daughter, the trouble will be as good as cured."
For a little time Raymer was speechless. Then he burst out.
"Well, I'll be— Jove, Griswold, you don't lack much of being as cold-blooded as the old buccaneer himself! What makes you think he is stirring up the trouble?"