Morgan was distant.
“I guess he’ll live another day, don’t worry about him,” said he, in surly voice.
“What time do you aim to be back today?” pursued Joe, entirely unmoved by Morgan’s show of temper.
“Say, I’ll set up a bulletin board with my time-table on it if you’ve got to have it, Mr. Overseer!” said Morgan, looking up from the buckling of a shaft-strap, his face coloring in anger.
“Well, you don’t need to get huffy over it.”
“Mind your business then,” Morgan growled. 79
He didn’t wait to discuss the matter farther, but got into the buggy without favoring Joe with as much as another glance, gave his horse a vindictive lash with the whip and drove off, leaving the gate open behind him.
Joe shut it, and turned back to his mowing.
Many a time he paused that morning in his labor, leaning on the snath of his scythe, in a manner of abstraction and seeming indolence altogether strange to him. There was a scene, framed by the brown casing of the kitchen door, with two figures in it, two clinging hands, which persisted in its disturbing recurrence in his troubled mind.
Ollie was on dangerous ground. How far she had advanced, he did not know, but not yet, he believed, to the place where the foulness of Morgan had defiled her beyond cleansing. It was his duty as the guardian of his master’s house to watch her, even to warn her, and to stop her before she went too far.