I had borne a good deal pretty patiently, but this was over the mark.
"You have no right to speak to me like that," said I. "What have I done but to be good to you, or try to? And here is my repayment! O, it is too much."
She kept looking at me with a hateful smile. "Coward!" said she.
"The word in your throat and in your father's!" I cried. "I have dared him this day already in your interest. I will dare him again, the nasty pole-cat; little I care which of us should fall! Come," said I, "back to the house with us; let us be done with it, let me be done with the whole Hieland crew of you! You will see what you think when I am dead."
She shook her head at me with that same smile I could have struck her for.
"O, smile away!" I cried. "I have seen your bonny father smile on the wrong side this day. Not that I mean he was afraid, of course," I added hastily, "but he preferred the other way of it."
"What is this?" she asked.
"When I offered to draw with him," said I.
"You offered to draw upon James More?" she cried.
"And I did so," said I, "and found him backward enough, or how would we be here?"