“For the love of Pete! What else do you find to read in ’em?” he said. “Well, I was telling Kirk about it. The Kid came at me to soak me, but I soaked him first and put him out. It’s the only thing to do, ma’am, when you’re up against it. Get in the first wallop before the other guy can get himself set for his punch. ‘Kirk,’ I says, ‘don’t you wait for old man Bannister to tell you you can’t marry Miss Ruth. Marry her before he can say it.’ I wish you’d tell him the same thing, ma’am. You know the old man as well as I do—better, I guess—and you know that Kirk ain’t got a chance in a million with him if he don’t rush him. Ain’t that right?”
“Mr. Dingle,” said Mrs. Porter, “I should like to shake you by the hand. It is amazing to me to find such sound sense in a man. You have expressed my view exactly. If I have any influence with Mr. Winfield, he shall marry my niece to-day. You are a man of really exceptional intelligence, Mr. Dingle.”
“Aw, check it with your hat, ma’am!” murmured Steve modestly. “Nix on the bouquets! I’m only a roughneck. But I fall for Miss Ruth, and there ain’t many like Kirk, so I’d like to see them happy. It would sure get my goat the worst way to have the old man gum the game for them.”
“I cannot understand a word you say,” said Mrs. Porter, “but I fancy we mean the same thing. Here comes Mr. Winfield at last. I will speak to him at once.”
“Spiel away, ma’am,” said Steve. “The floor’s yours.”
Kirk entered the studio.
Chapter VI.
Breaking the News
Old John Bannister returned that night. Learning from Bailey’s trembling lips the tremendous events that had been taking place in his absence, he was first irritated, then coldly amused. His coolness dampened, while it comforted, Bailey.
A bearer of sensational tidings likes to spread a certain amount of dismay and terror; but, on the other hand, it was a relief to him to find that his father appeared to consider trivial a crisis which, to Bailey, had seemed a disaster without parallel in the annals of American social life.
“She said she was going to marry him!”