Her eyes were bright and her bosom was disturbed.
"I thought, maybe, you and him might be friends; but I might have known," she went on bitterly. "He only makes friends with the men who lay down to him. You ain't that sort."
I threw out my hands helplessly.
"Well, Rita, don't you worry your little head over it. It is all right."
"Oh, no, it ain't! Don't fool yourself. You don't know Joe."
"I reckoned him a man who could keep his own counsel. How did you come to hear there had been any words?"
"He was over home. He only comes once in a while now. He didn't do anything but talk about you. Called you all kinds of things. Says he'll fix you good;—and he will, too, or he ain't the Joe Clark everybody knows around here."
Her eyes became tender and moist as she held out her hands to me with an involuntary movement. "Oh! what did you want to quarrel with him for, before you knew anything about him?"
I rose and laid my hand lightly on her shoulder, as I would with a little sister,—had I had one,—for she seemed only a slip of a girl and it hurt me to see her so upset.
"Look here! little maid," I said, "you forget all about it. Joe came in here and asked me to do what the man who employed me particularly instructed me against doing. I declined, and Joe became foolish, losing his temper completely. This Joe likes to trample on men. He grew angry because I would not let him do any trampling on me. No! Rita, I am not a teeny-weeny little bit afraid of Joe Clark."