“What air they?” His tone was peremptory.
“I don’t know that I can explain them to you. But truly there are so many of them—and your words took me so wholly by surprise, that—that——”
“Yeh needn’t mince matters! I knaow! Yeh hev sot yer idees on Seth! Yeh needn’t tell me yeh hain’t!”
“I won’t talk with you at all if you shout at me in that way, and contradict me flat when I assure you to the contrary.”
Milton paused for a moment, to consider the situation. They were approaching the poplars now, along the lonely turnpike, and the conversation could not be much protracted. What he had to say must be said without delay. But what was it that he wished to say? A dozen inchoate plans rose amorphously to the surface of his mind—to cajole her, to strive further to impress her with his wealth, to entreat her, to attempt to bully her. This last resource ran best with his mood, but there were difficulties. Annie was the reverse of a cowardly girl; there was nothing timid or tremulous about her; if he attempted to intimidate her, the enterprise would most probably be a ridiculous failure, for he stood too much in awe of her self-reliance and intelligence to have confidence in his own mastery.
But stay—she was fearful about Seth. Whether it was true or not that she had no idea of marrying her cousin, she was evidently solicitous for his safety. An idea born of this conclusion swiftly engrafted itself upon the hired man’s general strategy. He lifted his light, shifty eyes from the grass of the roadside path to her face, once more, and said:
“Well, ef you’re a mine to be mean, I kin be mean tew—meaner ’n’ pussly. Ef yeh think I’m goin’ to stan’ still, ’n’ let yeou ’n’ Seth hev it all yer aown way, yer mistaken. I’ve only got to open my maouth to th’ Cor’ner, ’n’ whair’d he be, ’n’ yeou tew?”
There was a certain indefinable suggestion of bravado in his tone which caught Annie’s attention. It was the barest, most meagre of shadows, but she grasped at the chance of substance behind it.
“I don’t believe you could say anything, or do anything, which would injure him,” she said, with more confidence in her words than she felt in her heart.
“Oh, yeh daon’t, ay!” he growled. “Ef yeh knaowed what I knaow, p’raps yeh’d change yer teune.”