“All right, then; don’t criticise.”
“Yes, there is a certain sweet reasonableness in your curt suggestion. A man who is unable, or unwilling, to work in the vineyard should not find fault with the pickers. And now, Renny, for the hundredth time of asking, add to the many obligations already conferred, and tell me, like the good fellow you are, what you would do if you were in my place. To which of those two charming, but totally unlike, girls would you give the preference?”
“Damn!” said the professor quietly.
“Hello, Renny!” cried Yates, raising his head. “Have you cut your finger? I should have warned you about using too sharp a knife.”
But the professor had not cut his finger. His use of the word given above is not to be defended; still, as it was spoken by him, it seemed to lose all relationship with swearing. He said it quietly, mildly, and, in a certain sense, innocently. He was astonished at himself for using it, but there had been moments during the past few days when the ordinary expletives used in the learned volumes of higher mathematics did not fit the occasion.
Before anything more could be said there was a shout from the roadway near them.
“Is Richard Yates there?” hailed the voice.
“Yes. Who wants him?” cried Yates, springing out of the hammock.
“I do,” said a young fellow on horseback. He threw himself off a tired horse, tied the animal to a sapling,—which, judging by the horse’s condition, was an entirely unnecessary operation,—jumped over the rail fence, and approached through the woods. The young men saw, coming toward them, a tall lad in the uniform of the telegraph service.
“I’m Yates. What is it?”