The glimmer of satiric yet benevolent humour that was never long absent from her eyes, lightened there again, as she rolled and lit a "Plowboy."
"Have you noticed a change in the weather? A storm is blowing up. I'm speaking figuratively ... I might as well out with it, Johnnie,—there's a report, growing in strength, that a mob of townspeople is scheduled to come your way to-night, some time, and treat you to a serenade of protest and the traditional yokel hospitality of mobs ... a coat of tar and feathers and a ride on a rail beyond the town limits."
"So it's come to that, has it?"
"Johnnie, it isn't the townsfolk that started it ... of that I am certain ... left alone, they would still have been content to mind their business, and accept you and Hildreth on a friendly basis...."
She brought up the story of the strange men haranguing from street corners again....
"It's the New York newspapers, or one or two of the most sensational of them, that are back of this new phase."
"You mean, Mrs. Rond, that they would dare go so far as to instigate an attack on me and Hildreth ... with possibly fatal results?"
"Of course they would ... they need more news ... they want something more to happen ... to have all this uproar end tamely in happy, permanent love—that's what they couldn't endure....
"Well," she resumed after a pause, "what are you going to do? You're not afraid, are you?"
"To tell the truth I am, very much afraid."