Saxon shrugged her shoulders.
They ironed swiftly and silently for a quarter of an hour.
“Well,” Mary decided, “if he does butt in maybe he'll get his. I'd like to see him get it—the big stiff! It all depends how Billy feels—about you, I mean.”
“I'm no Lily Sanderson,” Saxon answered indignantly. “I'll never give Billy Roberts a chance to turn me down.”
“You will, if Charley Long butts in. Take it from me, Saxon, he ain't no gentleman. Look what he done to Mr. Moody. That was a awful beatin'. An' Mr. Moody only a quiet little man that wouldn't harm a fly. Well, he won't find Billy Roberts a sissy by a long shot.”
That night, outside the laundry entrance, Saxon found Charley Long waiting. As he stepped forward to greet her and walk alongside, she felt the sickening palpitation that he had so thoroughly taught her to know. The blood ebbed from her face with the apprehension and fear his appearance caused. She was afraid of the rough bulk of the man; of the heavy brown eyes, dominant and confident; of the big blacksmith-hands and the thick strong fingers with the hair-pads on the back to every first joint. He was unlovely to the eye, and he was unlovely to all her finer sensibilities. It was not his strength itself, but the quality of it and the misuse of it, that affronted her. The beating he had given the gentle Mr. Moody had meant half-hours of horror to her afterward. Always did the memory of it come to her accompanied by a shudder. And yet, without shock, she had seen Billy fight at Weasel Park in the same primitive man-animal way. But it had been different. She recognized, but could not analyze, the difference. She was aware only of the brutishness of this man's hands and mind.
“You're lookin' white an' all beat to a frazzle,” he was saying. “Why don't you cut the work? You got to some time, anyway. You can't lose me, kid.”
“I wish I could,” she replied.
He laughed with harsh joviality. “Nothin' to it, Saxon. You're just cut out to be Mrs. Long, an' you're sure goin' to be.”
“I wish I was as certain about all things as you are,” she said with mild sarcasm that missed.