beamed in his eyes was so sincere, that Mr. Tarbox hardly needed the
profuse apologies which broke from him. "Forgive me!" he continued to
stammer, "I have wronged you, wronged HER--everybody. But as you know,
Mr. Tarbox, how I have felt over this, how deeply--how passionately"--
"It DOES make a man loony sometimes," said Mr. Tarbox, relaxing into
demure dryness again, "so I reckon you DID! Mebbe she reckoned so, too,
for she asked me to give you the handkercher I sent ye. It looked as if
she'd bin doin' some fancy work on it."
Brice glanced quickly at Mr. Tarbox's face. It was stolid and
imperturbable. She had evidently kept the secret of what passed in
the hollow to herself. For the first time he looked around the room
curiously. "I didn't know you were a land agent before," he said.
"No more I was! All that kem out o' that paragraph, Mr. Brice. That man
Heckshill, who was so mighty perlite that night, wrote to me afterwards
that he didn't know my name till he'd seed that paragraph, and he wanted
to know ef, ez a 'well-known citizen,' I could recommend him some timber
lands. I recommended him half o' my own quarter section, and he took it.
He's puttin' up a mill thar, and that's another reason why we want peace
and quietness up thar. I'm tryin' (betwixt and between us, Mr. Brice) to
get Harry to cl'ar out and sell his rights in the valley and the water
power on the Fork to Heckshill and me. I'm opening a business here."
"Then you've left Mrs. Tarbox with Miss Flora in your cabin while you
attend to business here," said Brice tentatively.
"Not exactly, Mr. Brice. The old woman thought it a good chance to come
to 'Frisco and put Flo in one o' them Catholic convent schools--that
asks no questions whar the raw logs come from, and turns 'em out
first-class plank all round. You foller me, Mr. Brice? But Mrs. Tarbox
is jest in the next room, and would admire to tell ye all this--and I'll
go in and send her to you." And with a patronizing wave of the hand, Mr.
Tarbox complacently disappeared in the hall.
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