“Oh, Pet! what will you do, if the niggers should see you?” said Erminie, clasping her hands.
Pet touched her pistols significantly.
“Two years ago, Ranty taught me to shoot, you little pinch of cotton-wool! and I haven’t forgotten the way for want of practice since, I can tell you. I can see by the light of a nigger’s eye, in the dark, how to take aim as well as any one.”
“You shoot!” said Ranty, contemptuously. “You’re nothing but a little boaster and a coward at that; all boasters are. You’d fall into fits at the first glimpse of a woolly head.”
“I wouldn’t! and I ain’t a coward!” cried Pet, stamping her foot passionately, while her fierce black eyes seemed fairly to scintillate sparks of fire. “I hate you, Ranty Lawless, and I’ll just do as I like, in spite of you all!” And flushed with passion, Pet fled out, sprung on her fleet Arabian, as wild and fiery as herself, and striking him fiercely with her whip, he bounded away as if mad. Two minutes after and the black, fiery horse and little, dark, fiery rider were both out of sight.
And looking deeply troubled and anxious, gentle little Erminie returned to the house.
“Whew! what a little tempest! what a tornado! what a bombshell she is! Now, who in the world but her would fire up in that way for a trifle? This getting up steam for nothing is all a humbug! Girls always are a humbug, though, anyway,” said the polite and gallant Mr. Lawless. “Luckily there’s one sensible individual in the family.”
“Yourself, I suppose,” said Erminie, as she proceeded to set the room to rights, like the neat little housewife that she was.
“Yes,” said Ranty; “all the good sense and good looks, too, of the family have fallen to my share, except what uncle Harry Havenful has got.”
“You seem to have a great idea of your own beauty,” said Ray, turning from the window, where he had stood to hide his mortification, ever since his rebuff from Pet.