“Took him by the collar and shook him—and told him either to go home or be quiet.”
“And he went home—I see.”
“Yes—when he had recovered himself sufficiently. 32 I thought, at first, his anger was going to choke him.”
“Imagine big, good-natured Roderick stirred sufficiently to lay hands on any one!” she laughed.
“But imagine him when stirred,” he said.
“I hadn’t thought of him in that way,” she said, slowly—“Ough!” with a little shiver, “it must have been terrifying—what had Mattison done to him?”
“Nothing—Mattison is too much of a coward ever to do anything.”
“What had he said, then?”
“Oh, some brutality about one of Colloden’s friends, I think,” Croyden evaded. “I didn’t quite hear it—and we didn’t discuss it afterward.”
“I’m told he is a scurrilous little beast, with the men,” she commented; “but, I must say, he is always polite to me, and reasonably charitable. Indeed, to-night is the only deliberately bad manners he has ever exhibited.”