Dan Murray creaked into the room. “Michael James,” he whispered, “you ought to take something. Have a bite to eat. Take a cup of tea. I’ll bring it in to you.”
“Oh, let me alone, Daniel,” he answered. He felt he would like to kick him and curse him while doing so.
“You must take something.” Murray’s voice rose from a whisper to a low, argumentative sing-song. “You know it’s not natural. You’ve got to eat.”
“No, thank you, Daniel,” he answered. It was as if he were talking to a boy who was good-natured but tiresome. “I don’t feel like eating. Maybe afterward I will.”
“Michael James,” Murray continued.
“Well, what is it, Daniel?”
“Don’t you think I’d better go down and see young Kennedy and tell him how foolish it would be of him to come up here and start fighting? You know it isn’t right. Hadn’t I better go down? He’s at home now.”
“Let that alone, Daniel, I tell you.” The thought of Murray breaking into the matter that was between himself and the young man filled him with a sense of injured delicacy.
“I know he’s going to make trouble.”
“Let me handle that, like a good fellow, and leave me by myself, Daniel, if you don’t mind.”