He looked from me to Tom—Tom, standing off there ready to spring on him, to dart past him, to fly out of the window—ready for anything; only waiting to know what the thing was to be.
My senses came back to me then. The sight of Obermuller, with those keen, quick eyes behind his glasses, his strong, square chin, and the whole poise of his head and body that makes men wait to hear what he has to say; the knowledge that that man was my friend, mine—Nancy Olden's—lifted me out of the mud I'd sunk back in, and put my feet again on a level with his.
"Tom," I said slowly, "Mr. Obermuller is a friend of mine. No—listen! What we've been talking about is settled. Don't bring it up again. It doesn't interest him and it can't change me; I swear to you, it can't; nothing can. I'm going to ask Mr. Obermuller to help you without telling him just what the scrape is, and—and I'm going to be sure that he'll do it just because he—"
"Because you've taken up with him, have you?" Tom shouted savagely. "Because she's your—"
"Tom!" I cried.
"Tom—oh, yes, now I remember." Obermuller got between us as he spoke. "Your friend up—in the country that you went to see and couldn't. Not a very good-looker, your friend, Nance. But—farming, I suppose, Mr.—Tom?—plays the deuce with one's looks. And another thing it does: it makes a man forget sometimes just how to behave in town. I'll be charmed, Mr. Tom, to oblige a friend of Miss Olden's; but I must insist that he does not talk like a—farmer."
He was quite close to Tom when he finished, and Tom was glaring up at him. And, Mag, I didn't know which one I was most afraid for. Don't you look at me that way, Mag Monahan, and don't you dare to guess anything!
"If you think," growled Tom, "that I'm going to let you get off with the girl, you're mighty—"
"Now, I've told you not to say that. The reason I'll do the thing she's going to ask of me—if it's what I think it is—is because this girl's a plucky little creature with a soul big enough to lift her out of the muck you probably helped her into. It's because she's got brains, talent, and a heart. It's because—well, it's because I feel like it, and she deserves a friend."
"You don't know what she is." It was a snarl from Tom. "You don't—"