"What call has an old bachelor to be fixing things up?" he demands. "What do I care how the place looks? And what business is it of yours, anyway?"
"Say, you're a consistent grouch, ain't you?" says I, givin' him the grin. "What's the particular trouble—was you toppin' your drive to-day?"
"Slicin', mon," says he. "Hardly a tee shot found the fairway the whole round. And then you two come breaking me bushes."
"My error," says I. "But you should have hung out a sign that you was inside chewin' nails."
"I was doing nothing of the kind," says he. "I was waiting for that grinning idiot, Len Hung, to give me me tea."
"Well, don't choke over it when you do get it," says I. "And if you ain't ready to sic the police on us we'll be trotting along back."
"Ye wull not," says MacGregor; "ye'll have tea with me."
It sounds like a threat, and I can see Vee gettin' ready to object strenuous. So I gives her the nudge.
I expect it's because I'm so used to Old Hickory's blowin' out a fuse that I don't duck quicker when a gas-bomb disposition begins to sputter around. They don't mean half of it, these furious fizzers.
Sometimes it's sciatica, more often a punk digestion, and seldom pure cussedness. If you don't humor 'em by comin' back messy yourself, but just jolly 'em along, they're apt to work out of it. And I'd seen sort of a human flicker in them blue-gray eyes of MacGregor Shinn's.