“You damned eavesdropper–––”
“Sure, eavesdropper is right,” Weir interrupted, coolly. “So I just stepped in here from my booth next door to discuss the situation with her; you can’t mislead an innocent girl like her with the intention of shaking her when you get her into a city, not if I know about it and am around. If you sincerely intend to marry her, and will do so to-morrow in my presence, then I’ll withdraw. Afterwards I mean, of course.”
Sorenson arose.
“Come, Mary. Stand aside, you!”
“She doesn’t go with you,” the engineer stated.
For a moment the men’s eyes locked, those of one full of blue fire and hatred, those of the other quiet as pieces of flint.
“And she shall keep with me while I telephone to your father that you brought her here under promise of marriage, a girl of sixteen, without her own parents’ consent, and now refuse to marry her,” Steele added.
A sneer twisted the other man’s mouth.
“My father happens to be in the east, where he’s been for a month,” he mocked. “If he were here, he wouldn’t believe you; he’d know you were a liar. He knows I’m engaged to marry–––” Bite off the words as he tried, they had escaped.
“Ah, that’s the way of it!” Weir remarked with a silky smoothness. “You expect to marry some other 37 girl––and have no intention whatever of marrying Mary here.”