“You are hurting me. Let go my arm.”
Philip flung it aside and said, “What do I care?”
“Then why do you call me a coquette?”
“Do as you like.”
“So I will. Philip! Philip! Phil! He's gone.”
It was twenty miles by coach and rail from Douglas to Sulby, but Philip was back at “The Manx Fairy” the next evening also. He found a saddle-horse linked to the gate-post and Ross inside the house with a riding-whip in his hand, beating the leg of his riding-breeches.
When Philip appeared, Kate began to look alarmed, and Ross to look ugly. Cæsar, who was taking his tea in the ingle, was having an unpleasant passage with Grannie in side-breaths by the fire.
“Bad, bad, a notorious bad liver and dirty with the tongue,” said Cæsar.
“Chut, father!” said Grannie. “The young man's civil enough, and girls will be girls. What's a word or a look or a laugh when you're young and have a face that's fit for anything.”
“Better her face should be pitted with smallpox than bring her to the pit of hell,” said Cæsar. “All flesh is grass: the grass withereth, the flower fadeth.”