But Teddy tore loose and rushed into the garage, where he found Sadie still struggling with a recalcitrant piston of her dismounted motor. He seized a cold chisel from the work-bench.
“What did that fresh Mick say to you?” he demanded.
“Drop it at once, Teddy,” commanded Sadie. “When I can’t manage Ryan with my own hands, I’ll get a gun. Besides, I want you to hold these rings tight for me, so I can push this piston in.”
Teddy obeyed, marveling at the strength of the small brown fingers that had essayed the task unaided. Once more that strange, choking sensation assailed him, and he felt his eyes unaccountably filling with tears.
“Sadie, you’re an everlasting little marvel,” he said. “I expect you’ll marry one of these rich fans; but I wish it was me.”
“I don’t want to marry anybody,” the girl replied. “Say, can’t you hold those rings in without trembling so?”
“But you got to marry somebody,” Teddy insisted.
“I don’t have to,--there, that’s well in at last,--at least not for a long time, till I get good and ready. And then he’ll have to be extra good and handsome and rich. I’m awfully ambitious, you know.”
“That’s all right, kid,”--Teddy swallowed a lump in his throat,--“but take care you don’t put it off too long.”
The girl looked up from her work with a puzzled air.
“Take a good slant at me,” explained Teddy. “Don’t you see anything in my eyes?”
“They look queer, kind of anxious and strained. They’re like Will Ryan’s.”
“Everybody that stays in this game as long as we have gets the same look. It comes from being scared stiff once or twice, and not being able to forget it.”
“I’m never scared,” said Miss Simmons, with a toss of her shapely little head.
“You haven’t begun yet. Wait till some one drops in front of you in the last lap, and you have just half a second to make up your mind whether you’ll run over him or take a chance among the crowd. One stunt like that, and you won’t be so pretty.”
“Then you can ask me again,” said Miss Simmons, with her usual quiet self-possession. “I can almost see you doing it.”
“I tell you it’s no game for a girl,” Teddy persisted.
“Touch wood when you say that,” advised Teddy, laying his own hand on the bench.
“I won’t,” the girl retorted. “I reckoned all the chances before I came into the game, and there’s no one to cry over me if I did get killed except Aunty, and she’s made up her mind to it long ago and become quite resigned. Besides, I’ve taken chances ever since I can remember. Did you ever play the carnivals? I was raised in them, if you can call it that. I did the high dive for years into a sort of canvas bucket half-full of water, and I don’t think I’ve a scare in me.”