"Well, that is one way of looking at it I hadn't thought of!" I laughed.
"That Carmichael man is just an Irish brute! I suppose you have to put up with such people in the packing business, but I couldn't have them in my house."
"The Carmichaels don't trouble us much," I replied, smiling to myself at Sarah's ideas of things. "And John's all right—as honest as most men. This isn't just a case of stealing somebody's wash from the back yard, you know."
"But it's just as wrong! It's dishonest!" she cried with a proud tone in her voice. She came across the room and took hold of me by the shoulders. "Van, you don't believe in bribing people and such things? Why, you're too big and strong and handsome"—she gave me a kiss—"to do such common things!"
"Well, I don't know; it depends how you call it."
But she gave me another kiss, and before we could recover from this argument there was a knock at the dressing-room door.
"My, Van! There's the first of them, and I haven't my dress hooked. You run and send Mary to me!" That rather closed the topic for the present.
There were ten of us at dinner, and we tried to keep up a chatter about the little things that Sarah had trained me to talk of when I was in company—the theatres and the opera, Mrs. Doodle's new place in the country, or old Steele's picture by the French painter. But to-night it was hard work: my thoughts would wander back to the Yards. At last the ladies left us to put on their wraps, and the men were lighting their cigars, when a servant told me that a man was waiting in the hall to see me. It was Carmichael.
"Why didn't you come right out, John?" I exclaimed. "Some of your friends are out there."
"No, thanks, Van," he growled. "I ain't got my fancy clothes on this trip, and maybe your wife wouldn't think me good enough for her friends" (which was pretty close to the truth). "But I come to see you about something important."