“Careful!” he steadied her. “I know how you feel, Glen, but we’ve got to be patient.”
“Patient!” She blazed with chivalrous indignation, “I don’t want to be patient. I want to do something now!”
The mountaineer shook his head. “Wait. Trust me.”
Her hot blue gaze plumbed the dark depths of his. “I do, Luke! You know I trust you! But why can’t I go to Nancy Carey, and make her come down here and see conditions and contrast them with other mills, and realize— She’s a soft little thing, but she’s gentle and kind, and——”
He cut her short. “Yes—gentle and kind like old Carey’s gentle and kind—when it won’t interfere with their own comforts or profits. Carey’s good-natured; he wouldn’t kick a dog or curse a nigger, but he’ll grind every ounce of work out of his hands and house ’em like swine, and never figure he’s being hard. No, Glen—you wait!”
She was mutinous. “Wait, wait, wait! I’m sick of it, Luke? What am I waiting for?”
He considered in silence for a long moment. “Wait till I’m so necessary to him that he’ll have to listen to me.”
“But, Luke, he listens to you now! It’s wonderful the way he talks to you and takes your advice about things! Why, he’d listen to you this minute!” She came close to him, eager, ardent.
“Yes—and laugh at me, and tell me to mind my own business! And my business is to try to get the mill out of the red ink just now. No, Glen,” he said again, gravely, regretfully, “you wait.”
So the doctor’s daughter waited, perforce, and found a fresh outlet for her emotion. There had been a surprising influx of foreigners to the Altonia in recent years, dark-eyed, dark-skinned South Europeans whom Ben Birdsall disliked and distrusted.