“Do you wish to speak to Mrs. Hastings?” she asked.
Hawtrey’s lip curled. “No,” he said, “if she’ll excuse me, I don’t think I do. If you tell her you have been successful, she’ll probably be quite content.”
Agatha went out without another word. Hawtrey lighted his pipe and stretched himself out in his chair, when he heard the wagon drive away a few minutes later. He did not like Mrs. Hastings, and had a suspicion that she had no great regard for him, but he was conscious of a grim satisfaction. There was, though it seldom came to the surface, a current of crude brutality in his nature, and it was active now. When Agatha had first come from England the change in her had been a shock to him, and it would not have cost him very much to let her go. Since then, however, her coldness and half-perceived disdain had angered him, and the interview which was just past had left him in an unpleasant mood. Though it was, perhaps, the last effect he would have expected, it had stirred him to desire a fulfillment of her pledge. It was consoling to feel that he could exact the keeping of her promise. His face grew coarser as he assured himself of his claim, but he had never realized the shiftiness and instability of his own character. It was his misfortune that the impulses which swayed him one day had generally changed the next.
This became apparent when, having occasion to drive in to the elevators on the railroad a week later, he called at a store to make one or two purchases. The man who kept the store laid a package on the counter.
“I wonder if you’d take this along to Miss Creighton as a favor,” he said. “She wrote for the things, and Elliot was to take them out, but I guess he forgot. Anyway, he didn’t call.”
Hawtrey told the clerk to put the package in his wagon. He had scarcely seen Sally since his recovery, and he suddenly remembered that, after all, he owed her a good deal, and that she was very pretty. Besides, one could talk to Sally without feeling the restraint that Agatha’s manner usually laid on him.
The storekeeper laid an open box upon the counter.
“I guess you’re going to be married by and by,” he said. Hawtrey was thinking of Sally then, and the question irritated him.
“I don’t know that it concerns you, but in a general way it’s probable,” he replied.
“Well,” said the storekeeper good-humoredly, “a pair of these mittens would make quite a nice present for a lady. Smartest thing of the kind I’ve ever seen here; choicest Alaska fur.”