“You sure are, and you’ll see it yourself by and by. You’ve no call to get wire-edged about Mr. Norcross. He’s not very strong. He’s just getting well of a long sickness. I knew a chill would finish him, that’s why I gave him my slicker. It didn’t hurt me, and maybe it saved his life. I’d do it again if necessary.”
“Since when did you start a hospital for Eastern tenderfeet?” he sneered; then his tone changed to one of downright command. “You want to cut this all out, I tell you! I won’t have any more of it! The boys up at the mill are all talkin’ about your interest in this little whelp, and I’m getting the branding-iron from every one I meet. Sam saw you go into the barn with that dude, and that would have been all over the country to-morrow, if I hadn’t told him I’d sew his mouth up if he said a word about it. Of course, I don’t think you mean anything by this coddlin’.”
“Oh, thank you,” she interrupted, with flaming, quick, indignant fury. “That’s mighty nice of you. I went to the barn to show Mr. Norcross where to stall his horse. I didn’t know Sam was here.”
He sneered: “No, I bet you didn’t.”
She fired at this. “Come now! Spit it out! Something nasty is in your mind. Go on! What have I done? What makes you so hot?”
He began to weaken. “I don’t accuse you of anything. I—but I—”
“Yes you do—in your heart you distrust me—you just as much as said so!”
He was losing his high air of command. “Never mind what I said, Berrie, I—”
She was blazing now. “But I do mind—I mind a whole lot—I didn’t think it of you,” she added, as she realized his cheapness, his coarseness. “I didn’t suppose you could even think such things of me. I don’t like it,” she repeated, and her tone hardened, “and I guess you’d better pull out of here—for good. If you’ve no more faith in me than that, I want you to go and never come back.”
“You don’t mean that!”