“Aw, yeh know well enough—the Murray girls, and the MacKenzies, and the hull lot of them. And then—and then—there's Mandy, too.” Here Tim shot a keen glance at his friend, who now sat leaning against the trunk of an apple tree with his eyes closed.
“Now, Tim, you are a shrewd little chap”—here Cameron sat upright—“but how do you know about the girls, and what is this you say about Mandy? Mandy is good to me—very kind and all that, but—”
“She used to like Perkins pretty well,” said Tim, with a kind of hesitating shyness.
“And Perkins?”
“Oh, he thought he jist owned her. Guess he ain't so sure now,” added Tim. “I guess you've changed Mandy all right.”
It was the one thing Cameron hated to hear, but he made light of it.
“Oh, nonsense!” he exclaimed. “But if I did I would be mighty glad of it. Mandy is too good for a man like Perkins. Why, he isn't safe.”
“He's a terror,” replied Tim seriously. “They are all scairt of him. He's a terror to fight. Why, at MacKenzie's raisin' last year he jist went round foamin' like an old boar and nobody dast say a word to him. Even Mack Murray was scairt to touch him. When he gets like that he ain't afraid of nothin' and he's awful quick and strong.”
Tim proceeded to enlarge upon this theme, which apparently fascinated him, with tales of Perkins' prowess in rough-and-tumble fighting. But Cameron had lost interest and was lying down again with his eyes closed.
“Well,” he said, when Tim had finished his recital, “if he is that kind of a man Mandy should have nothing to do with him.”