"Married?" asked the young man rapidly.
"She?—No," said Bates, taken by surprise.
"Young lady?" asked the other, with more interest. Bates was not accustomed to consider his ward under his head.
"She is just a young girl about seventeen," he replied stiffly.
"Oh, halibaloo!" cried the youth joyously. "Why, stranger, I haven't set eyes on a young lady these two months. I'd give a five dollar-bill this minute, if I had it, to set eyes on her right here and now." He took his pipe from his lips and clapped his hand upon his side with animation as he spoke.
Bates regarded him with dull disfavour. He would himself have given more than the sum mentioned to have compassed the same end, but for different reasons, and his own reasons were so grave that the youth's frivolity seemed to him doubly frivolous.
"I hope," he said coldly, "that she will come in soon." His eyes wandered involuntarily up the hill as he spoke.
"Gone out walking, has she?" The youth's eyes followed in the same direction. "Which way has she gone?"
"I don't know exactly which path she may have taken." Bates's words grew more formal the harder he felt himself pressed.
"Path!" burst out the young man—"Macadamised road, don't you mean?
There's about as much of one as the other on this here hill."