“None of my business if they have,” grunted the driver.
Toppy laughed.
“You’re a sociable brute! Why don’t you bark and be done with it?”
The driver viciously pulled the team to a dead stop and turned upon Toppy with a look that could come only from a spirit of complete malevolence.
“Don’t try to talk to me, young feller,” he snapped, showing old yellow teeth. “My job is to haul you out there, and that’s all. I don’t talk. Don’t waste your time trying to make me. Giddap!”
He cut viciously at the horses with his whip, pulled his head into the collar of his fur coat with the motion of a turtle retiring into its shell, and for the rest of the drive spoke only to the horses.
Toppy, snubbed by the driver and feeling himself shunned, perhaps even despised, by Miss Pearson, now had plenty of time to think over the situation calmly. The crisp November air whipping his face as the sleigh sped steadily along drove from his brain the remaining fumes of Harvey Buncombe’s champagne. He saw the whole affair clearly now, and he promptly called himself a great fool.
What business was it of his if a girl wanted to go out to work in a place like Hell Camp? Probably it was all right. Probably there was no necessity, no excuse for his having made a fool of himself by going with her. Why had he done it, anyhow? Getting interested in anything because of a girl was strange conduct for him. He couldn’t call to mind a single tangible reason for his actions. He had acted on the impulse, as he had done scores of times before; and, as he had also done scores of times before, he felt that he had made a fool of himself.
He tried to catch the girl’s eyes once more, to read in them some sign of relenting, some excuse for opening a conversation. But as he turned his head Miss Pearson also turned and looked away with uncompromising severity. Toppy studied the purity of her profile, the innocence of the baby dimple in her chin, out of the corner of his eye. And as he turned and glanced at the evil face of the hunchback driver he settled himself with a sigh, and thought—
“Nevertheless, and notwithstanding the fact that I’ve been a fool, I am glad that I’m here.”