She added softly:--
"And they say that the girl did not care for him at all, but was
actually going to run off with Pedro, when he stopped her and sent for
Mrs. Peyton."
To her surprise, Jim's face flushed violently.
"It's all a dod-blasted lie," he said, in a thick stage whisper. "It's
only the hogwash them Greasers and Pike County galoots ladle out to
each other around the stove in a county grocery. But," recalling himself
loftily, and with a tolerant wave of his be-diamonded hand, "wot kin
you expect from one of them cow counties? They ain't satisfied till they
drive every gentleman out of the darned gopher-holes they call their
'kentry.'"
In her admiration of what she believed to be a loyal outburst for his
friend, Phoebe overlooked the implied sneer at her provincial home. But
her father went on with a perfunctory, exasperating, dusty aridity:--
"That mebbee ez mebbee, Mr. Hooker, but the story down in our precinct
goes that she gave Mrs. Peyton the slip,--chucked up her situation as
adopted darter, and went off with a queer sort of a cirkiss woman,--one
of her own KIN, and I reckon one of her own KIND."
To this Mr. Hooker offered no further reply than a withering rebuke of
the waiter, a genteel abstraction, and a lofty change of subject. He
pressed upon them two tickets for the performance, of which he seemed to
have a number neatly clasped in an india-rubber band, and advised
them to come early.
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