"Well, I live with her at Vernons. I'm Irish, y' know. My--my father died in Charleston, and I came from Ireland to live with Miss Pinckney. Mr. Richard Pinckney is my guardian."
"Your which? Dick Pinckney your guardian! Why, he's not older than I am--that fellow your guardian--why, he wears a flannel petticoat."
"He doesn't," cried Phyl, flinging away the cigarette, which had become noxious, and roused to sudden anger by the slighting tone of the other. "What do you mean by saying such a thing?"
"Oh, I only meant that he's too awfully proper for this life. He goes to Charleston races, but never backs a horse, scarcely, and one Mint Julep would make him see two crows. He's a sort of distant relation of ours."
Phyl was silent. She resented his criticism of her friend, and just in this moment the something mad and harum scarum in the character of Silas seemed shown up to her with electrical effect. Criticism is a most dangerous thing to indulge in, unless anonymously in the pages of a journal, for the right to criticise has to be made good in the mind of the audience, unless the audience is hostile to the criticised.
Then she said: "I don't know anything about Mint Juleps or race courses, but I do know that Mr. Pinckney has been--is--is my friend, and I'd rather not talk about him, if you please."
"Now, you're huffed," cried Silas exultingly, as though he had scored a point at some game.
"I'd never dream of getting out of temper with _you_," said she.
It was his turn to flush. You might have struck Silas Grangerson without upsetting his balance, but the slightest suspicion of a sneer raised all the devil in him. Had Phyl been a man he would have knocked him off the log. He cast the stump of his cigarette on the ground and pounded it with his heel. Had there been anything breakable within reach he would have broken it. Her anger with him vanished and she laughed.
When they came round to the front of the house they found Colonel Grangerson and Miss Pinckney coming down the steps.
They were going to the garden in search of Phyl.
"We've been looking at the horses," said Silas, after he had greeted Miss Pinckney. "No, sir, I did not leave any of the doors open, but I've been looking for Sam with a blacksnake whip to liven him up. He left the grey without grooming after she was brought in this morning, and I was rubbing her down myself when this lady came into the yard."
