“Mr. Craig, I was”—she stressed the verb significantly—“an employee in the Vose-Mern agency in New York. I met you in their office.”
He clasped his hands behind him as if he feared to have them free in front of him; her proximity seemed to invite those hands, but his countenance revealed that he was not in a mood then to give caresses. “Was, eh? May I ask what you are right now?”
“I’m doing my best to help in getting the Flagg drive down the river—without trouble!”
“Trouble!” He was echoing her again; it was as if, in his waxing ire, he did not dare to launch into a topic of his own. “What do you call it, what has been happening upriver?”
“I presume you mean that dams have been blown to get water for our logs.”
“Our dams!” he shouted.
“I’m a stranger up here. I don’t know whose dams they were. I have heard all kinds of stories about the rights in the dams, sir.”
“I can’t say to you what I think—and what I want to say! You’re a girl, confound it! I’ll only make a fool of myself, talking to you about our rights and our property. But I can say to you, about your own work, that you have been paid by our money to do a certain thing.”
She opened her eyes on him in offended inquiry.
“I take it that you’re the same one who called herself Miss Patsy Jones when you operated at Adonia.”