"Looks like Miss Dunham's gettin' more cheerfuller lately," he blurted at last, not glancing up, but whittling so briskly that the chips about him on the floor looked like the shorn curls of a lamb.
Ambrose lifted his face from the depth of a large ledger where he had been laboriously writing down the day's accounts. "Yes, ain't she?" he returned happily; "seems like she's sorter too big to be hurt by other folk's meannesses." Then walking across the shop he laid his hand on his friend's shoulder with a gesture that was almost a caress.
"You been goin' out to see her yourself considerable lately, ain't you? So mebbe she ain't needin' much other comp'ny," Miner suggested, raising his eyes and then lowering them quickly before the other man could catch his glance.
Ambrose hesitated. "Why, mebbe I have," he confessed slowly; "funny I ain't ever thought of it in that light! You see I've been a-tryin' to do what you asked and hatch up some scheme to make 'Pennyrile' understand and like Miss Dunham better, but Em'ly and me ain't come to any conclusion yet that's good enough, so I reckon that's why I keep on a-goin'."
"Em'ly!" Miner sprung off his barrel top like he had been struck. "So it's come to that, has it?" And by this time his sneer and anger were so unmistakable that his companion, whose expression had been perfectly frank a moment before, turned a dull red and for the first time in his life his eyes dropped before those of his friend.
"I ain't callin' her Em'ly to her face, Miner, at least not more'n once or twice," he answered painfully, feeling himself turn hot and cold in the same instant, and an awful weight settle itself upon his chest. Then a relieved light broke over him. "Mebbe now I'm thinkin' upon her as Em'ly because some day you and she——"
"Liar!" The little man, blinded with passion, struck out somewhere into the region of his friend's chest and, when Ambrose caught his hands and held them, twisted and growled like a little dog in the grasp of a big one, repeating over and over in a thick voice, "Liar, liar, you know you want her for yourself, you know you love her, so what damn use is there in you pretendin' before me?" until his rage had partly spent itself.
Ambrose had made no sort of answer or defence; indeed, his big hands had seemed to cling to Miner rather than to restrain him, besides which there was something in his appearance that would have made it hard to continue angry with him even if you had not loved him.
"I didn't know, Miner," he said at last, hushed and frightened, "I didn't know until you spoke it. I reckon I do love her, but now I know I won't see or speak with her no more."
Then when Miner had banged his way out of the store the tall man, sitting down on the deserted barrel, began to shake, and there was shame on his face and the look of a man who has suddenly heard that the ship on which he is sailing must go down. For several hours he remained in his shop, sometimes walking up and down and then reseating himself on the barrel, but wherever he went and whatever he did old Moses dragged his rheumatic legs after him. Two or three times the man patted the dog, whispering reassuringly, "It's all right; don't you be worryin' none about me, old fellow."