“You didn’t say that. You only said you came with her.”
“Well, I live with her at Vernons. I’m Irish, y’ know. My—my father died in Charleston, and I came from Ireland to live with Miss Pinckney. Mr. Richard Pinckney is my guardian.”
“Your which? Dick Pinckney your guardian! Why, he’s not older than I am—that fellow your guardian—why, he wears a flannel petticoat.”
“He doesn’t,” cried Phyl, flinging away the cigarette, which had become noxious, and roused to sudden anger by the slighting tone of the other. “What do you mean by saying such a thing?”
“Oh, I only meant that he’s too awfully proper for this life. He goes to Charleston races, but never backs a horse, scarcely, and one Mint Julep would make him see two crows. He’s a sort of distant relation of ours.”
Phyl was silent. She resented his criticism of her friend, and just in this moment the something mad and harum scarum in the character of Silas seemed shown up to her with electrical effect. Criticism is a most dangerous thing to indulge in, unless anonymously in the pages of a journal, for the right to criticise has to be made good in the mind of the audience, unless the audience is hostile to the criticised.
Then she said: “I don’t know anything about Mint Juleps or race courses, but I do know that Mr. Pinckney has been—is—is my friend, and I’d rather not talk about him, if you please.”
“Now, you’re huffed,” cried Silas exultingly, as though he had scored a point at some game.
“I’m not.”
“You are—you’ve flushed.”