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Confess!" the husky young flier roared in a jokingly ferocious tone. "Don't get sore!" Rock gasped between chuckles. "I couldn't resist. Boy, did you hear everyone squeal when the lights went out?" Tom grinned in relief. "How about another dance, Phyl?" As the music struck up again, he squeezed Phyl's hand. "I sure appreciate your concern, even if I didn't rate it."
Phyl's nature was such that whilst always ready to fly into wrath and easily moved to bitter resentment, one touch of kindness, one soft word, had the power to disarm her. One soft word from an antagonist had the power to wound her far more than a dozen words of bitterness. Filled now with absolutely superfluous self-reproach, she stood for a moment unable to speak.
For Sandy's and Phyl's sakes he was eager to do everything possible to make the square dance a success. But on the other hand.... "I'm pretty busy today," Tom said. "But my sister and my friend Bud Barclay can tell you what we want probably better than I can. Suppose I ask them to meet you there after lunch?" There was a slight pause. "Very well," Morris agreed, although he sounded a bit annoyed.
The cunning of the woman held her from praise of Phyl's goodness and mental qualities, or any over praise of the goods she was bringing to his attention. "Has he spoken to her about it?" asked he. "I'm sure to goodness I don't know what I'm about telling you a thing that was told to me in confidence," said the other. "Well, you promise never to say a word to Phyl or to any one else if I tell you."
Still holding her by the arm, caressingly, she led her off across the hall and up the stairs; on the first floor landing she opened a door; it was the door of the bedroom next to Phyl's, a room of the same shape and size and with the same view over the garden.
"What right have you to dare " She stopped. The blaze of her anger seemed to Silas evidence that she cared for Pinckney. "You're in love with him," said he, flying out. The bald and brutal statement took Phyl's breath from her. She turned on him, saw the anger in his face, and then turned away. His state of mind condoned his words.
Richard Pinckney was at home, and at the sight of him Phyl's heart went out towards him. Clean, well groomed, honest, kindly, he was like a breath of fresh sea air after breathing tropical swamp atmosphere. Strange to say Miss Pinckney seemed to feel somewhat the same.
In Phyl's mind as a child one might suppose that through the doors ajar some recollections of forgotten gods once worshipped had stolen, and that the power of the Ju-ju and the Druids' stone lay in their power of focussing those vague and wandering threads of remembrance.
To save Phyl's reputation, Miss Pinckney would have perjured herself twice over. Miss Pinckney had many faults and limitations, but she had the grand common sense of a clean heart and a clear mind. She could tell a lie with a good conscience in a good cause, but to hide even a small fault of her own, the threat of death on the scaffold would not have made her tell a lie.
Then, suddenly, his eyes became fixed on a paragraph which he re-read as though puzzled by the meaning of it. Then he looked up at the other over his glasses. "Why, what's this?" said he. "He has made you Phyl's guardian. You!" Pinckney laughed. "Yes, that was the chief thing that brought me over.
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