“I’ll not have anything to do with the fellow!” said the major, flushing hotly. “How can you ask such a thing of me? Throw it away, it’s no concern of yours—the memorandum of a cattle thief!”
Frances drew herself straight. Her imperious chin was as high as Major King ever had carried his own in the most self-conscious moment of his military career.
“Will you take it to him?” she demanded.
“Certainly not!” returned the major, haughtily emphatic. Then, softening a little, “Don’t be silly, Frances; what a row you make over a scrap of blowing paper!”
“Then I’ll take it myself!”
“Miss Landcraft!”
“Major King!”
It was the steel of conventionality against the flint of womanly defiance. Major King started in his saddle, as if to reach out and restrain her. It was one of those defiantly foolish little things which women and men—especially women—do in moments of pique, and Frances knew it at the time. But she rode away from the major with a hot flush of insubordination in her cheeks, and Alan Macdonald quickened from his pensive pose when he saw her coming.
His hand went to his hat when her intention became unmistakable to him. She held the little paper out toward him while still a rod away.