Dingle pressed more food from their basket on Medora and the well meant action apparently annoyed her. What passed between them was not heard, save the last words.
“Don’t be a fool,” she said. “Can’t I have my own way even in that?”
“Hush!” replied Ned. “Have it as you will.”
But she grew angry; her face lowered and she pressed her lips together.
The others joked and Mr. Knox offered Medora a piece of pie.
“Hard hearted devil, you are, Dingle,” he exclaimed. “To eat the cheese and offer your poor girl the bread.”
Medora jumped up and at the same moment Daisy Finch came along to seek her. They departed together and strolled from the works up the valley.
But Ned Dingle was evidently disturbed. His face had fallen and he lit his pipe and went slowly after the women.
“Take my tip and leave her alone,” shouted Knox; then he caught sight of Kellock’s perturbed countenance and turned to him.
“Sometimes a bit of chaff makes a breeze end in laughter,” said the elder; “and sometimes it don’t.”
“Chaff’s a ticklish thing,” answered Jordan.
“To you it might be, because you’re one of the serious sort, that never see much to laugh at in anything,” retorted Philander; “but that’s your loss. Alice Barefoot in the rag house is the same. Can’t see a joke and mistook my fun yesterday for rudeness. I might have known by her eye she weren’t a laughter-loving creature. But Mrs. Dingle can laugh.”
“She laughs when there’s anything to laugh at,” said Kellock drily.
“The art is to find something to laugh at in everything,” explained Philander Knox. “And married people ought to practice that for their own salvation more than any.”
“How is it you ain’t married?” asked Robert Life. He was a man of few words and his wife worked in the glazing house with Medora.
“For the very good reason that my wife’s dead,” replied Mr. Knox. She’s left me for a better place and better company—a very excellent wife according to her lights, and I missed her.”
“I dare say you’ll find another here,” suggested a man who had come along a minute before. It was Henry Barefoot, Alice’s brother, the boilerman—an old sailor, who had drifted into the Mill when his service days were done.
“If I do, Henry, it won’t be your sister, so don’t throw out no hopes,” answered Knox.