Ten minutes later, with faces aflame, they went, hand in hand, into the smoking-room. The Governor wheeled about on his revolving chair to look at them.
"Well," he said, "it's easy to see what you two have come about. But not for six months! I won't agree to a day less, remember."
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
AT THE SPEAKER'S
Before Alick Gell reached his father's house another had been there on the same errand.
Earlier in the afternoon Dan Baldromma, while running his hands through the ground flour in the mill, with the wheel throbbing and the stones groaning about him, had been struck by a new idea.
"Liza," he said, returning to the dwelling house and standing with his back to the fire and his big hands behind him, "that young wastrel ought to be freckened into marrying the girl, and I'm thinking I know the way to do it, too."
"It's like thou do, Dan," said Mrs. Collister.
Dan's device was of the simplest. It was that of sending the mother of Bessie Collister to the mother of Alick Gell to threaten and intimidate her.
"But sakes alive, man, that's an ugly job, isn't it?"