"Did you defer to your father-in-law?" asked Carter brutally.
The tone was insulting and the meaning plain, and ninety-nine men out of a hundred in a similar place would have resented it fiercely. But Slade merely yawned. His sallow face neither twitched nor changed its tint. He got up and stretched himself lazily. "So that's the trouble, is it? Well, you didn't ask me to consult you when I chose a wife, and I didn't ask you to fall in love with my daughter." He turned his head and eyed Carter thoughtfully--"You are in love with her, I suppose?"
"Can you suggest any other possible reason why I should ask her to marry me?"
"Well, I can hardly imagine you did it for the honor of an alliance with me. I suppose if I were an energetic man I should try and worry out what it is you're so sore about. It must be something beyond the detail that Laura's got a touch of color in her, because of course you knew that from the first moment you met her. But I guess the something else will show itself in its own good time. In the meanwhile if you'll give me an account of what you advanced to Laura for this Grand Canary trip, I'll give you an I.O.U. for it. I don't care to be indebted to anyone for things like that."
"I'll perhaps send in the bill when I hear there's a possibility of getting cash payment," said Carter dryly.
And then for the first time Slade lost his temper, and he cursed his future son-in-law with all an old Coaster's point and fluency. Every man has his tender point, and here was Owe-it Slade's. Throughout all his life he had never paid a bill if he could help it, and he had accepted the consequent remarks of injured parties with an easy philosophy. But it seemed he owned a nice discrimination; some items were "debts of honor," and these he had always sooner or later contrived to settle. And the account which he decided he owed Carter for Laura's maintenance in Grand Canary he set down as one which no gentleman could leave unpaid without besmirching his gentility.
Now, as the servant of O'Neill and Craven, Carter had done his work well and indeed enthusiastically, and after he had left the firm's employ he had neither competed with them in business nor done them harm in any way whatever. It is true that at his memorable interview with the King of Okky with a little persuasion he could have got that grateful monarch to take off the embargo which he had laid on the factories at Monk, Malla-Nulla, and Smooth River, though the fact that he did not put forward pressure on this point could hardly have reached the ear of Miss O'Neill. Indeed it is to be doubted if she ever knew that any reference to her name or affairs cropped up at all.