"Good-morning! This is Bob."
"How are you?"
"I've read every line in every paper. I'm so excited I had to call up. Could I do something—make a speech, or something like that?"
"Wish you might— I'd be nominated sure."
She resented his flippancy, she was so in earnest.
"I won't keep you; I know you're busy, Governor."
"I'll take that as a prophecy. By the way, I may not be able to dine with you to-night."
"Sorry! Good-bye."
He frowned at her abrupt dismissal as he went back to work, then he forgot all about her. Bob set down the steel bar smartly. For some reason she was irritated at the interview. She had expressed herself with such emotion, and he had received it with such cool matter of factness. She treated herself to a mental shaking, which Englished might have read thus:
"Look here, Barbara Garratry, this man is nothing to you but an interesting interlude between Now and the Hereafter. He asked you to marry him as an experiment. He laid stress on a lack of sentiment. Now don't you let your Irish feelings clutter things up. You fight for the fight's sake and leave the man out of it."