"When I hands in my checks--"
Flora ran and clung tenderly to his arm, but with a distressed smile he clasped her wrists in one hand and gently forced her back again while she asked in burning undertone, "And you 'ave run that h-awful risk for me? for me? But, why? why? why?"
"Oh!" he laughingly said, and at the wall once more waved the ringing trowel, "instinct, I reckon; ordinary manhood--to womanhood. If you had recognized me in that rig--"
"And I would! In any rigue thiz heart would reco'nize you!"
"Then you would have had to betray me or else go, yourself, to Ship Island"
"H-o-oh! I would have gone!"
"That's what I feared," said Hilary, though while he spoke she fiercely felt that she certainly would have betrayed him; not for horror of Ship Island but because now, after this, no Anna Callender nor all the world conspired should have him from her alive.
He lifted his tool for silence, and fresh anger wrung her soul to see joy mount in his eyes as from somewhere below the old coachman sang:
"When I hands in my checks, O, my ladies!"
Yet she showed elation: "That means Anna and Victorine they have pazz' to the boat?"