“The last was the worst! And I do mean the skip. Now that we are where you cannot beat me I will confess that I followed you and saw your neat little mediæval revenge from the station——”
“Hush!” Gregory glanced about apprehensively, and drew her outside. “You mustn’t tell anyone else that. You don’t want to be summoned to the witness stand, I suppose?”
Ora gasped. “I never thought of that.”
“When will women let men do their thinking?” Gregory looked the primeval male as he scowled down at her. Nor did he mitigate her alarms with the information that underground battles seldom were continued in the courts. “Now, I am going to take you to your cottage, and I want you to stay there until the trouble is over. The men are bound to get drunk and fight. Better go to Butte——”
“I won’t.”
“Very well, then, stay in your house.”
“And be bored to death? Besides. I need exercise. I’ll roam all over the place unless you promise to come to supper every night and then take me for a walk in the woods.”
His eyes flickered. “Perhaps your engineer——”
“He’s a mere child. I hate boys. And I must have exercise.”
He looked at her with apparent stolidity for another moment, but she knew that he was investigating her expressive orbs. They expressed nothing that could be construed as flirtation, coquetry, or personal interest in himself. He saw himself mirrored there merely as the friend of her husband and the husband of her friend. “Very well,” he said curtly and swung on his heel. “I suppose I must look out for you. Come along.”