"All that'll keep till to-morrow, Mr. McNab, won't it?" she asked. "Have a game of euchre with Steve and me, now. Let's play cut-throat—it's more exciting. Father can think over what you've said and tell you in the morning."
"Yes ... yes ... you think it over, Farrel," McNab said eagerly.
He was glad enough to shelve discussion of this urgent matter which had brought him from the Wirree to talk to the Schoolmaster, seeing that it was not at all urgent and did not look like it.
Deirdre pushed the bottle of rum between him and Steve. She sat opposite to them, the broad yellow glare of the dip on her face.
The liquor was already beginning to warm McNab's brain. His head was steady enough on his shoulders; but there was a glow within him. He watched the face of the girl before him as in a dream.
Farrel saw the arabesques of red and blue the cards made under the light as she threw them on the table. He heard her gleeful and triumphant exclamations. He realised what she was doing for him, was sore and angry, but there was nothing to do but to play up to her. He sat at the far end of the table just out of the light: after a while his head drooped.
Deirdre's laughter flashed.
"Look at father," she cried, "he's dead with sleep!"
Farrel started and stared at her, sleepily.
"It's no good your blinking like an owl and pretending you weren't taking forty winks. You'd better go to bed and have done with it," she said.