“Go to the devil with your compliments!” snapped Britt. “If it wasn’t that I was losing my best teamster I wouldn’t have put out my little finger to save him from mince-meat.”
He saw the girl, turned over a seat to face her, and began to fire rapid questions at her regarding her father and mother and the latest news of Castonia settlement. When the conversation languished, as it did soon on account of the inattention of the young woman, the Honorable Pulaski caught the still flaming eye of Dwight Wade, and crooked his finger to summon him. Wade merely scowled the deeper. The Honorable Pulaski serenely disregarded this malevolence as a probable optical illusion, and when Wade did not start beckoned again.
“Come here, you!” he bellowed. “Can’t you see that I want you?”
With new accession of fury at being thus baited, the young man started up, resolved to take his employer aside and free his mind on that matter of news-mongering. But the bluff and busy tyrant was first, as he always was in his dealings with men.
“Here, Wade,” he shouted, “you shake hands with the prettiest girl in the north country! This is Miss Nina Ide, and this is my new time-keeper, Dwight Wade. He’s going to find that there’s more in lumbering than there is in being a college dude or teaching a school. Sit down, Wade.”
He pulled the young man into the seat.
“Entertain this young lady,” he commanded. “She don’t want to talk with old chaps like me. Her father—well, I reckon you know her father! Oh, you don’t? Well, he’s first assessor of Castonia settlement, runs the roads, the schools, and the town, has the general store and post-office, and this pretty daughter that all the boys are in love with.”
And at the end of this delicate introduction he pushed brusquely between them, and went back to talk with his elderly admirer in the rear of the car.
Wade looked into the gray eyes of the girl sullenly. There was an angry sparkle in her gaze.
“Well, Mr. Wade, you may think from what that old fool said that I’m suffering to be entertained. If you think any such thing you can change your mind and go back.”