“For the same reason as yourself.”
“What is that?”
“She has your picture in her room, she has my lucky dollar in her pocket.”
Halby’s face flushed, and then he turned and looked steadily into Pierre’s eyes.
“We’d better settle this thing at once. If you’re going to Fort O’Battle because you’ve set your fancy there, you’d better go back now. That’s straight. You and I can’t sail in the same boat. I’ll go alone, so give me the pistol.”
Pierre laughed softly, and waved the hand back. “T’sh! What a high-cock-a-lorum! You want to do it all yourself—to fill the eye of the girl alone, and be tucked away to By-by for your pains—mais, quelle folie! See: you go for law and love; I go for fun and Jimmy Throng. The girl? Pshaw! she would come out right in the end, without you or me. But the old man with half a lung—that’s different. He must have sweet bread in his belly when he dies, and the girl must make it for him. She shall brush her hair with the ivory brush by Sunday morning.”
Halby turned sharply.
“You’ve been spying,” he said. “You’ve been in her room—you—”
Pierre put out his hand and stopped the word on Halby’s lips.
“Slow, slow,” he said; “we are both—police to-day. Voila! we must not fight. There is Throng and the girl to think of.” Suddenly, with a soft fierceness, he added: “If I looked in her room, what of that? In all the North is there a woman to say I wrong her? No. Well, what if I carry her room in my eye; does that hurt her or you?”