The mutinous young waiter brought their food and thumped it truculently down before them.
"Look out!" said Dean with sudden violent harshness, the vein in his forehead darkening ominously. "What do you think you're doing, feeding cattle?"
The boy drew back in confusion, and Annie exclaimed: "Oh, he didn't mean it anything against us—he's just mad because he has to be a waiter."
"Well, he'd better be careful; kids can be too smart Aleck."
The little gust had deflected them away from their own affairs. But
Annie brought them back. She leaned toward him.
"You make me kind of afraid of you. If you ever spoke to me like that it'd just about kill me."
He was contrite. "Why, I couldn't ever speak to you like that, honey; it just made me mad the way he banged things down in front of you. I don't want people to treat you like that."
"And you look so fierce, too—scowling so all the time."
He put up a brown finger and touched his savage vein.
"Now, now—you mustn't mind my look. All the Dean men are marked like that; it's in the blood. It don't mean a thing." He smiled winningly. "I reckon if you're beginning to scold me you're going to marry me, huh?"