"Why should I be glad?" parried Loudon.
"You're not very polite, Tom. You—you make me feel very badly. Why, oh, why do you persist in making it so hard for me?"
Kate's voice was pitched low, and there was a running sob in it. But Loudon was not in the least affected.
"Last time I seen yuh," Loudon stated, deliberately, "yuh told me flat yuh never wanted to see me again. Yuh was engaged to Sam Blakely, too. I don't understand yuh a little bit."
"Perhaps you will when I explain. You see, I am no longer engaged to Mr. Blakely."
"Yo're lucky."
"I think so myself. Under the circumstances, can't we be friends again? I didn't mean what I said, boy. Truly I didn't."
Loudon was looking at Kate, but he did not see her as she sat there in her chair, her black eyes imploring. Instead, he saw her as she appeared that day in the kitchen of the Bar S, when she wiped his kiss from her mouth and ordered him to leave her.
"Yo're too many for me," he said at last. "I dunno what yo're drivin' at. But if yuh want to be friends, why, I'm the last fellah in the world to be yore enemy. Yuh know I never have exactly disliked yuh, Kate. Well, I got to be weavin' along. Glad to have seen yuh, Kate. I'll see yuh later, maybe."
"Of course you will, Tom. I'll be at Lil's—Mrs. Mace, you know, at the Bend. You will come and see me, won't you?"