Patience accepted the introduction with flushed reserve.
“I’m right glad to know you,” stated Mr. Grogan, removing his hat gallantly and wiping a perspiring brow with his handkerchief. “But let me tell you I don’t think much of your friend, Harvey Spencer. Sure, I’ve been riding with him for two hours and you’re the first pleasant object he’s shown me. And such a ride! It’s a certainty that this young fellow knows every bump and thank-ye-ma’am in the village and he’s taken me full speed over all of them. I feel like I’d been churned. But I’ll forgive him all that now—now that he’s shown me you.”
There was a sincerity in Mr. Grogan’s raillery that swept away Patience’s reserve. Besides, he was over fifty.
“Sure,” she said, slyly imitating Mr. Grogan’s brogue, “you’ve been kissing the blarney stone, Mr. Grogan.”
“Will ye listen to that now?” said Grogan enthusiastically, as he started to clamber off the wagon.
“Sit still, Mr. Grogan,” said Harvey, laughing.
“But didn’t you hear her, man alive? Sure, she’s Irish—”
“No, I’m not,” put in Patience, “but I’ve heard of the blarney stone.”
“Look at that, now,” said Grogan, returning to his seat with an air of keen disappointment. “And I was just longin’ to see someone from the Ould Sod. I thought—”
“How do you like riding with Harvey?” inquired Patience, changing the subject.