“A little more to starboard and you’ll get it on,” she retorted with a glint of her late father’s raillery, and she gave the coat a twitch which put it right on the ample shoulders.
“Bully! bully!” he cried. “I’ll give you the tip for the Askatoon cup.”
“I’m a Christian. I hate horse-racers and gamblers,” she returned mockingly.
“I’ll turn Christian—I want to be loved,” he bleated from the doorway.
“Roll on, proud porpoise!” she rejoined, which shows that her conversation was not quite aristocratic at all times.
“Golly, but she’s a gold dollar in a gold bank,” remarked Jesse Bulrush warmly as he lurched into the street.
The girl stood still in the middle of the room looking dreamily down the way the two men had gone.
The quiet of the late summer day surrounded her. She heard the dizzy din of the bees, the sleepy grinding of the grass hoppers, the sough of the solitary pine at the door, and then behind them all a whizzing, machine-like sound. This particular sound went on and on.
She opened the door of the next room. Her mother sat at a sewing-machine intent upon some work, the needle eating up a spreading piece of cloth.
“What are you making, mother?” Kitty asked. “New blinds for Mr. Kerry’s bedroom-he likes this green colour,” the widow added with a slight flush, due to leaning over the sewing-machine, no doubt.