“But I did paint the portrait of the jailer,” he protested, his cheeks fiery.
“I knew you’d been in chokey all the same.” Coble clapped his paw on the last button of his waistcoat. “A stomach that size warn’t born yesterday. But I’ve kept it from Rosie; she don’t understand business, nor how credit’s a fair wind to-day, and to-morrow a tornado tearin’ around and layin’ everything low. You find a good father,” pursued Coble, in accents as impersonal as they were angry, so that Matt fancied he had mistaken the Titan’s import, “and convince him your folks are respectable, and there’s no wife foolin’ around in London or New York City, and,” here he resumed his walk, “if he don’t jump at you—I’ll—waal, I’m blamed if I don’t give you my own darter. There!”
What he would have replied to this wager Matt never knew, for with a sudden cry of “Thunderation! The shark’s stolen,” the mountain bounded forward with incredible alacrity and dashed into the store.
But it was his own child who was the temporary thief. Matt, following Mr. Coble back into the store to see if his picture had been really paid the compliment of appropriation, found father and daughter bending admiringly over it as it stood on the counter, propped up against some large coarse grass-sponges. His heart beat faster with surprise and excitement.
“Hullo! You here?” said Rosina, raising a face that seemed radiant amid the dull browns and grays of the store.
“I didn’t know you would be here,” he answered, awkwardly, not knowing what to reply.
“Why, didn’t I tell you yesterday I was coming?”
She looked roguishly at him from beneath the broad brim of her flower-wreathed hat, whose narrow black-velvet strings were tied coquettishly under her left ear.
“So you did. I forgot,” he said.
“You seem to forget everything,” she responded, pertly.