"Sober! A pure-blooded Celt like himself!" Wishing still to carry out Scarlett's first orders, Barney hotly repudiated the charge of damaging sobriety on his behalf, but warned by a surreptitious kick that he was exceeding instructions, he softened it by asking, generally: "Wid a felly like himself, that dhrunk or sober is aqually an omadhaun, phwat the divvle is the differ?" And Scarlett also pleaded his own cause by admitting that he was frequently quite sober, though, thanks be! never to an intemperate degree.
Sarah groaned portentously, but the missionary spirit was awakening in Evelyn. "I can put up with a good deal," she asserted, "if I feel I am giving employment where it is really needed. But I must first know where I stand. Is this young person reliable, to be depended on in an emergency?"
"You betcherlife on that!" yelled the prospectors, in delighted chorus. As outlaws, the mounted policeman was their natural enemy, but for the time he had downed them, as in the long run, they, by instinct, realized he always would down them, and they respected him.
"You stake yer bottom plunk on it, d'ye see? He's the only man ever got me skinned forty ways from the Jack," in a generous climax conceded Bully Nick.
Evelyn's pretty face was clouded with perplexity. Categorically there was no specific charge against the applicant; moreover, the longer she looked at him the more was she impressed with the promise of strength in his splendid proportions, the resolute chin, clear, friendly eyes, even though the corners of a mobile mouth did curl as if with perpetual laughter in an outlook on life too original to be seemly in a wearer of livery—yet, evidently, something was being withheld from her. Urged, however, by all the little orphans, who by this time were in love with Scarlett, she remarked: "Yes, we must remember that we came up here not only for our own pleasure, but also to do good. I am tempted to take the young man on a month's trial, and at least endeavor to reform him. That is, if—— Officer," she again consulted Barney, "is he really the best protector you can find for us?"
Pushing his hat back from a brow heated by such unwonted drafts upon its thinking powers, Barney scratched his head while regarding his superior with disparagement. Finally, "well, yis, he is," he admitted, as if it were the last damnatory word to be spoken of the man.
Having ascertained that something over a dollar a day and his keep was as much as he was used to in the way of wage, Miss Durant instructed her new courier in his duties—"to look after our trunks, bicycles, banjos, pianola, mandolins——"
"And the pets, dear," put in Ruth, who was rather tired of trying to keep the peace between an Angora cat and a canary, a parrot that looked as if it had a wicked past and a bull pup who wished to include the parrot, past and all, in his present rampageous scheme of life.
"Oh, of course the menagerie! Then you must go ahead to engage the best suites for us at the hotels, and——"
"And follow ye to pick up the articles ye leave behind," Scarlett nodded, understandingly. "But till we get fairly started, I'll just accompany ye."