“What have you got to say about it?” The stout chap started to rise.
But Latisan was up first. He leaned over and set his big hand, fingers outspread like stiff prongs, upon the man’s head, and twisted the caput to and fro; then he drove the operative down with a thump in his chair. “This is what I’ve got to say! Remember that she is a lady, and treat her accordingly, or I’ll twist off your head and take it downstreet and sell it to the bowling-alley man.”
It was plain that the girl was finding a piquant relish in the affair.
From the moment when she came down the stairs and took the white apron which Brophy handed to her she had ceased to be the city-wearied girl. It was homely adventure, to be sure, but the very plainness of it, in the free-and-easy environment of the north woods, appealed to her sense of novelty. There was especial zest for her in this bullyragging of Crowley by the man who was to be victim of the machinations by the Vose-Mern agency. Her eyes revealed her thoughts. The city man opened his mouth. He promptly shut it and turned sideways in his chair, his back to Latisan. Detective Crowley was enmeshed in a mystery which he could not solve just then. What was the confidential secretary doing up there?
The girl smiled down on her champion—an expansive, charming, warming smile. “I thank you! What will you have?”
She surveyed his face with concern; his countenance was working with emotion. In her new interest, she noted more particularly than in the New York cafeteria, that he apparently was, in spite of what Craig had said, a big, wholesome, naïve chap who confessed to her by his eyes, then and there, that he was honestly and respectfully surrendering his heart to her, short though the acquaintance had been, and she was thrilled by that knowledge. She was not responding to this new appeal, she was sure, but she was gratified because the man was showing her by his eyes that he was her slave, not merely a presumptuous conquest of the moment, after the precipitate manner of more sophisticated males.
She repeated her question.
It was evident enough what Latisan wanted at that moment, but he had not the courage to voice his wishes in regard to her; he had not enough self-possession left to state his actual desires as to food, even. There was one staple dish of the drive; he was heartily sick of that food, but he could not think of anything else right then.
“Bub—bub—beans!” he stuttered.
She hurried away.