"No, you didn't; for we're mad and don't speak to each other."
"But you're not quarreling?"
"Nope," repeated Fom, stoutly, "we're not."
Mr. Pemberton shook his head helplessly. "What are you doing?"
"I'm running a drift"—Fom misunderstood the drift of his question—"from the Silver King to the Diamond Heart, and the earth keeps coming down. Then Bep tries to make it harder by grabbing for the tools and—"
"Why don't you timber?" suggested Pemberton, gravely.
"'Cause I don't have to," answered Fom, quite as seriously.
"Oh, you don't!" Pemberton, a man with no sense of humor, had been unusually expansive; but he shrank angrily into himself now, as though from a cold douche. It took some time for one to get accustomed to Fom's way of instructing authorities upon the subjects which they were supposed to know most about.
"No, that's silly," remarked Fom, superbly. "If the ground's sticky enough, and you're not butter-fingered,"—with an insulting glance at Bep,—"you can manage all right."
"But I'm not butter-fingered and I always timber." Warren Pemberton was a slow man, but a dogged one; the elusiveness of this pert child irritated him.