The words were simple; the tone was not.
"What do you mean?" cried Molly sharply. "Do you mean to say I was riding with him?"
Mrs. Sweeney wagged her head with aggravating sagacity.
"Nobody needn't put on no shoe that don't fit 'em," she said, and sighed with the air of a martyr who has discovered all and is disappointed.
Molly knew that her question had been justified by the woman's insinuation, that she had put on no shoe, and that if there were a martyr in the room it was not the agent's wife. Thereupon she said things excitedly. The agent's wife assumed an injured placidity, than which there is nothing more aggravating. Finally Molly flounced out of the room.
The agent's wife, being utterly in the wrong, sulked after the manner of women for the rest of the day, and had to be sued for forgiveness.
And yet next day, when Molly and the half-breed drove away, Mrs. Sweeney remembered that the girl had been with them nearly fifteen years, and wept; and the agent booted a trespassing Indian from his office with unwonted energy.
Molly, on the other hand, was as happy as a lark. Every man knows the thrill of anticipation when he stows the gun case under the seat and induces the pointer to curl up in the straw, just as every woman knows the delight of an entrance to a room which her presence brightens more than any other's. Molly experienced the same thrill, the same delight. She had the instincts of the coquette; the confidence of inexperience; the false ideals of a knowledge drawn from books and speculation; and her heart had not yet awakened her conscience. She looked forward to her own power over men, for she was intelligent, and realized the extent both of her charms and of her knowledge. The latter was not inextensive, for in her reading she had enjoyed the overwhelming advantage of heredity. Heredity is a little scheme by which, to a great extent, one recognizes knowledge, instead of acquiring it.
They drove along for some distance without speaking. The girl was too happy and the half-breed too preoccupied to talk.
"Mike," she commanded suddenly after a time, "quit that smoking. I don't like it."