A half an hour of this was sufficient to work 144 Bissell up into a furious rage, and, in something the same temper, he sent for Juliet an hour before dinner.
Now, a man who is subjected to choleric outbursts should never send for anything but food an hour before dinner, for the reason that a very trivial thing looks, at that time, big enough to wreck the nation. Bissell, however, failed to recollect this simple truth, and greeted his daughter with smoldering eyes, that gradually softened, however, the longer he looked at her.
“There is somethin’ I want to ask yuh, Prairie Bell,” he began. “Yuh won’t mind?”
“No, dear,” she answered. “What is it?”
“This sheepman Larkin—is it true yuh been courtin’ with him while I been away?”
“I’ve been riding with him a good deal, and I’ve seen him every day, if that is what you mean. You trust me to be sensible, don’t you, father?”
“Yes, Julie, o’ course I do; but I’m just thinkin’ of yerself—and of me. Dunno what people’d say if they knowed ol’ Bissell’s daughter was traipsin’ around with a sheepman that stands in with the rustlers. An’ you—I allow it’d break my heart if yuh ever got fond of that rascal. He’s a bad lot.”
“I can’t agree with you in any of those things,” 145 said the girl, with just the right mixture of determination and affection in her voice. “To anyone who is fair, it is no disgrace to be a sheepman; Mr. Larkin is not in with the rustlers, as I believe he outlined to you, nor is he a rascal in any way. Lastly, I don’t care what people say about whom I ride with. Mr. Larkin is a gentleman, and that is all I require.”
During this speech, which held the middle ground between daring and prudence, independence and acquiescence, civility and impertinence, Bissell’s jaw dropped and his eyes opened. He had rarely, if ever, known his daughter to make such an explicit refutal of his inferences. His brow darkened.
“Yuh never stuck up fer a man like that in yore life, Julie,” he accused her severely. “That Larkin is a bad one. Mebbe yuh don’t know it, but he can’t answer for everything in his life. O’ course, you can’t understand these things, but I’m just tellin’ yuh. Now, I’m plumb sorry to have to do it, but I want yuh to tell me yuh won’t go out with him any more.”