"Father got it this afternoon," he said. "It's awfully funny."
Sydney took it from its envelope. Bob, bending to buckle on his spurs, did not see her flush at the signature and then grow pale as she read.
"Bob," she whispered, hoarsely, "promise me,—promise that you'll let me know—if they do it—when it's going to be."
And Bob, who had no thought but to amuse her, said, heartily, "Why, of course."
Had von Rittenheim, sitting before his fire awaiting Bud's return, been able to see into the minds of his neighbors, he would have found matter more productive of mental confusion than were English irregular verbs to him.
That Dr. Morgan, after receiving a challenge, could settle back to the perusal of the Pickwick Papers as placidly as if he had attended to the last minute detail of the conventions attendant upon that process called "giving satisfaction," was a thing that his traditions, his education, and his environment had put it out of his power to understand.
That Bob could regard the incident as a joke was even farther from his grasp. An indifference caused by a lack of fear,—that was within his range. But that this method of wiping out an insult should be regarded as funny,—of such an emotion under such circumstances he could not conceive.
Sydney's feeling, could he have known it, was closer to his comprehension, because it is not beyond man's imagination to guess, approximately, the frame of mind into which a woman would be thrown upon hearing of such a prospective meeting. What he could not see was the importance that his own part played in the girl's fear.
The thing seemed to her barbaric, mediæval, horrible. She shook to think of harm that might come to her good old friend, the Doctor. She became an abject coward when she remembered that the old man was noted throughout the mountains as a perfect shot.
She could not understand herself. She had not had this feeling at all when Ben Frady had cleared the open space before the post-office of all loafers, and she unwittingly had ridden on to the scene, and, grasping the situation, had demanded his revolver from him and had received it.