him sweet on me and on mine, and take the inside track of others--I'D be
an Injin! And if you'd allow it, Pop, you'd be wuss nor a nigger!"

"Sho!" said her father, kindling with that intense gratification with
which the male receives any intimation of alien feminine weakness. "It
ain't that, Minty, I wanter know!"

"It's jist that, Pop; and I ez good ez let 'em know I seed it. I ain't a
fool, if some folks do drop their eyes and pertend to wipe the laugh out
of their noses with a handkerchief when I let out to speak. I mayn't be
good enough kempany--"

"Look yer, Minty," interrupted the blacksmith, sternly, half rising
from his seat with every trace of his former weakness vanished from his
hardset face; "do you mean to say that they put on airs to ye--to MY
darter?"

"No," said Minty quickly; "the men didn't; and don't you, a man, mix
yourself up with women's meannesses. I ken manage 'em, Pop, with one
hand."

Mr. Sharpe looked at his daughter's flashing black eyes. Perhaps an
uneasy recollection of the late Mrs. Sharpe's remarkable capacity in
that respect checked his further rage.

"No. Wot I was sayin'," resumed Minty, "ez that I mayn't be thought by
others good enough to keep kempany with baronetts ez is to be--though
baronetts mightn't object--but I ain't mean enough to try to steal away
some ole woman's darling boy in England, or snatch some likely young
English girl's big brother outer the family without sayin' by your
leave. How'd you like it if Richelieu was growed up, and went to
sea,--and it would be like his peartness,--and he fell sick in some
foreign land, and some princess or other skyulged HIM underhand away
from us?"

Probably owing to the affair of the specimens, the elder Sharpe did not
seem to regard the possible mesalliance of Richelieu with extraordinary
disfavor. "That boy is conceited enough with hair ile and fine clothes
for anything," he said plaintively. "But didn't that Louise Macy hev a
feller already--that Captain Greyson? Wot's gone o' him?"

"That's it," said Minty: "he kin go out in the woods and whistle now.
But all the same, she could hitch him in again at any time if the other
stranger kicked over the traces. That's the style over there at The
Lookout. There ain't ez much heart in them two women put together ez
would make a green gal flush up playin' forfeits. It's all in their
breed, Pop. Love ain't going to spile their appetites and complexions,
give 'em nose-bleed, nor