"What talk?"
The judge felt what courage was left in him oozing under Gwynne's icy stare.
"Oh Lord! It's just this, Gwynne—just fancy I am really your father. There are a lot of infernal old hens in this town—where don't they roost, anyway?—and they have been exercising themselves over your going out to Isabel's so much, especially at night. They've got the idea into their empty heads that Isabel has come back from Europe, where she lived by herself, with all sorts of free-and-easy notions. Perhaps the real truth is that they distrust any girl as handsome as that who won't marry. The talk didn't amount to much until yesterday morning—"
"Ah!" Gwynne stood up and took his hat from the little private rack. "Suppose you ask Mrs. Leslie to tell the hens that I have spent a great many futile evening hours, the only ones I have at my private disposal, trying to induce Miss Otis to marry me, and that yesterday evening, after the fourth or fifth refusal, I borrowed her horse, having walked out, and rode half-way to San Francisco to steady my nerves. Love and the law combined are somewhat of a load to carry. I will go out now and try my luck again. Perhaps this talk will influence her a bit. In fact I promise that it shall."
XXX
Gwynne found Isabel just stepping out of her launch, after a business morning in Rosewater, and was hospitably invited to dismount and remain for luncheon.
"Would you mind asking your Jap to make us some sandwiches and come with me up to my mountain shanty?" he asked. "I have rather a headache and want a long ride. Besides, it is high time I went. I should look over the roads, which they tell me are very bad after the heavy rains. I want to go into camp there in the early spring—have invited Hofer and one or two others for salmon-fishing. I have now sent three letters to the tenant, one Clink, by teamsters, and he has never replied. For all I know he may have burned the house down and decamped. So, altogether, this seems to me the time to go, and it would be very jolly to have you with me."
"I'd like nothing better," said Isabel, delightedly, "after talking eggs and chickens all morning. And I haven't been up to Mountain House for years. It used to belong to Uncle Hiram, you know. He always fished there in the spring, and took me with him. Then Mr. Colton bought it in—I won't be ten minutes."
"Now I know why you wear that hideous divided habit and ride astride," said Gwynne as they started. "I have been half-way up the mountain once or twice, to say nothing of the Marin hills, and I have never seen such roads. They are a disgrace to the State. Why on earth doesn't the legislature take them in hand?"